Vietnamese scientists have successfully invented a test kit that can be used to find out if a cooking has a toxic substance in it in just minutes.

One can know if there’s a toxic chemical substance in a food when the color of the reagent (that comes with the kit) turns a certain color - the result is visual. The institute plans to make 15 different kits, each of which will test for a different toxin. The test procedure is simple and the results instant.

There’s to be a test kit for nitrite (a no-no in processed meat), lead (in root crops from contaminated soil), insecticides (result to be obtained in 50 minutes) and other toxins, some of which will be able to get you results in just five minutes. It’s said that the kits will be highly sensitive and accurate.

The institute hopes that government food quality inspectors will use these test kits to protect us from poisons and that we consumers will use the kits ourselves at our favorite markets and stores. The test kits have been invented and the institute is now planning to take its invention to the patent office to get it registered for protection. After the institute obtains its patent, it then plans to take its invention into mass production. At this time the inventors believe that the test kits will be able to be produced so cheaply that the kit can be sold for only VND2,000-5,000.

A test kit for borax that was recently invented by the Ho Chi Minh city-based Chemical Technology Institute (No.1, Mac Dinh Chi, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City) and can be purchased for VND25,000 (good for 100 tests). This kit can identify borax in raw meat, fish, fermented pork roll, pork sausages, dry products - almost anything. If the food item has a borax level of five percent or more, the kit can detect it. The kit contains a small bottle of reagent and a special type of paper which is used specifically to identify chemical substances (if the color of paper turns into red, it means that there’s at least five percent borax in that food). The kit is fairly cheap and if five percent detection is good enough for you, it’s a bargain.

In Vietnam traditional methods have been used to test for the presence of microorganisms in foodstuffs. Experienced technicians need to do these tests and it takes two to six days to get a result. This is why it takes up to a week to find out what caused a particular food poisoning.

The people at the Chemical Technology Institute also wished to develop a test kit that would identify the presence of microorganisms. “The use of molecular biological techniques (PCR) in testing for pathogenic microorganisms in foodstuff” was a research project of Professor Tran Linh Thuoc (Ho Chi Minh University, Natural Sciences Department). This is a technique that multiplies bacteria genes millions of times so that those genes become visually identifiable. With molecular biological techniques, it only takes about 20 hours to find out the cause of a food poisoning. This became the basis for a new test kit that is now on the market.

The special feature of these kits is that they can identify 12 different kinds of bacteria including E. coli, E. coli 0157:h7, salmonella spp and shegella spp. Depending on the amount of bacteria that’s present in the food, these test kits can identify up to 12 bacteria within 24 hours. Compared to the traditional method, this newer method gives accurate results, it can identify more kinds of bacteria, and it can do it in a shorter period of time.

Samples of these kits have been used at the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health and Ho Chi Minh City Standby Public Health Center and they were thought to be good. The E. coli-test kit costs about VND30,000 per test while a similar kit that’s made by a foreign manufacturer will cost US$7-10.

VietNamNet/VEN