The food safety monitoring authority in Beijing - Beijing Municipal Center for Food Safety Monitoring (BFSM) - will use the BAX® detection system from DuPont to conduct its food safety supervision tasks in 2008.

BFSM was set up by the Beijing Food Safety Administration in 2004 to provide technical support for food safety management of the Beijing municipal government and the 2008 sports competition. In addition to selecting and organizing food safety testing institutes for the athletic events, the center also gathers food safety information, deals with emerging incidences and conducts risk evaluations.

“We are pleased to be working with BFSM to help ensure orderly food safety inspections in Beijing,” said Kevin Huttman, president - DuPont Qualicon. “As a leader in food diagnostics, we welcome this opportunity to share our expertise and provide technical support to help build a food safety supervision system for Beijing that will better serve the public with safer and healthier food.”

“Cooperating with DuPont on the analytic technique of microbe inspection is very exciting,” said Lu Yong, director of BFSM. “I am looking forward to a huge step forward in our testing ability as well as further cooperation in food safety through bilateral communication. The DNA-based BAX® system can deliver highly accurate testing results, which will significantly help us to conduct accurate analysis and evaluation on food.”

The BAX® system was the first commercial product to apply Nobel-prize winning technology - the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - to food testing in 1995. PCR is a fast and simple way to replicate DNA fragments from very minute amounts of source material. With this application, DuPont Qualicon delivered a dramatic increase in speed over previous technologies - and led the industry into a new era of fast, easy-to-use testing with more accurate results.

The BAX® system offers advanced DNA-based detection of microbes in food, from raw ingredients to finished products. It has been adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service for meat and poultry testing, validated by many international government labs and certified by independent authorities, such as AOAC International and the French Association of Normalization (AFNOR). In addition to safety testing for Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria and other pathogens, quality testing on the same platform can be performed with the BAX® system 48-hour assay for yeast and mold. DuPont Qualicon also markets the patented RiboPrinter® System, the world's only automated DNA fingerprinting instrument that rapidly pinpoints sources of bacteria in food and pharmaceuticals.