North America food safety testing market: $5.6 billion industry by 2018

The North America food safety testing market is suggested to have reached a value of around $3.7 billion by the end of 2012, and is forecast to grow to a total of $5.6 billion by 2018. In 2012, U.S. was the largest food safety testing market with 70% of share followed by Canada and Mexico. 2012 also saw the rapid testing method dominated by PCR-based methods, followed by immunoassay-based methods.

Food safety testing signifies testing of food products to assure the absence of contaminants that are responsible for foodborne illness, toxicity or poisoning. Food safety testing is essential to prevent consumption of contaminated food that has been responsible for outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. Contamination of food can occur due to exposure to contaminated equipments or raw materials, contaminated water, improper handling, and inefficient treatment.

In North America, food safety regulatory bodies such as FDA, CFIA, GFSI, USDA, etc. have been implementing food safety regulations to manufacture safe food using Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Good Agriculture Practices (GAP), and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems. The regulations specify testing of food materials and food manufacturing processes at every stage, to prevent food contamination and outbreaks of foodborne poisoning. Implementation of these food safety regulations has been driving the food safety testing market.

With the huge opportunity in the market, the existing laboratories are experiencing a significant boom in the industry. Major growth in the food safety testing market is anticipated to come from U.S. and Canada. The market growth has also been attributed to the new product/services launch for food safety testing. 

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