MultiScan Series 3000 food analyser

The MultiScan Series 3000 food analyser, from Next Instruments, has been added to the chemical lean (CL) approved methods list 2011 as of 2 March 2012.

The product is a near infrared transmission analyser for measuring protein, fat and moisture in meat, meat products, dairy products, baked goods and a wide range of other foods. It has been extensively trialled against reference tests for fat, moisture and chemical lean in ground beef between the ranges 50 to 95 CL.

The analyser uses a diode array spectrometer to collect the near infrared transmission spectrum of ground meat placed into a 10 mm deep sample dish. The sample dish is rotated in the light beam to collect 10 separate scans, which are then averaged. The instrument takes approximately 45 s to perform a test and reports up to six components simultaneously, eg, chemical lean, fat, moisture and protein.

Chemical Lean is defined as: CL = 100% meat minus % fat. It can also be calculated from % moisture using formulae for different meat types or a lookup table provided by AUS-MEAT. Meat processors and meat exporters are required to report the chemical lean for all meat products and food manufacturers procure meat based on the chemical lean.