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Spinach, ground beef, tomatoes, peppers, cheese and corn. This sounds like a list of ingredients for a tasty dinner straight from mom’s recipe box.
These common household grocery items are actually some of the hundreds of foods that were recalled in the last two years by the Food and Drug Administration.
One East Peoria couple is developing a device that will, hopefully, cut down on some of those recalls, and save the food industry and consumers money.
Rex Dyer is the founder and scientist at Ag Defense Systems, a food safety company started in December 2007 and operated out of the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center.
process than lab testing.
The BioSage can be used to detect viruses, fungus, bacteria and parasites while employing GPS tracking abilities.
“The FDA is overtasked and can’t keep up, which is why they miss things and we have these constant recalls,” Dyer said.
“Consumers demand things quickly and year-round,” Dyer added.
Dyer’s company will target food processors first with their device.
He said, most of the time, processors will have to send samples to a laboratory and it will take several days to get results back.
“These companies can’t afford to wait that long, so it slows down production and the mass recalls cost them tons of money,” Dyer said.
The food industry is a $1.25 trillion market in the U.S. There are more than 75 million illnesses a year as a result of food contamination.
Ag Defense Systems wants to distance itself from the competition by becoming more of a “sample prep” company rather than focusing on analysis.
“If our device can both extract and purify the DNA, we can sell it to researchers,” Dyer added.
For example, Dyer said, extracting DNA from an organism in a chunk of ground beef could be very tedious and time-consuming.
Dyer said the company is in the process of writing a proposal for an engineer, which they hope to have completed within a month.
A prototype for the device could be done within a year.
“We also have market researchers out there now polling all of the food processors in the nation to see what their needs are,” he added.
Dyer’s wife, Beth, will have an influence on the device as well. She owns and operates East Side Animal Hospital in East Peoria and plans to use it to test for pet food contaminants.
Spinach, ground beef, tomatoes, peppers, cheese and corn. This sounds like a list of ingredients for a tasty dinner straight from mom’s recipe box.
These common household grocery items are actually some of the hundreds of foods that were recalled in the last two years by the Food and Drug Administration.
One East Peoria couple is developing a device that will, hopefully, cut down on some of those recalls, and save the food industry and consumers money.
Rex Dyer is the founder and scientist at Ag Defense Systems, a food safety company started in December 2007 and operated out of the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center.
process than lab testing.
The BioSage can be used to detect viruses, fungus, bacteria and parasites while employing GPS tracking abilities.
“The FDA is overtasked and can’t keep up, which is why they miss things and we have these constant recalls,” Dyer said.
“Consumers demand things quickly and year-round,” Dyer added.
Dyer’s company will target food processors first with their device.
He said, most of the time, processors will have to send samples to a laboratory and it will take several days to get results back.
“These companies can’t afford to wait that long, so it slows down production and the mass recalls cost them tons of money,” Dyer said.
The food industry is a $1.25 trillion market in the U.S. There are more than 75 million illnesses a year as a result of food contamination.
Ag Defense Systems wants to distance itself from the competition by becoming more of a “sample prep” company rather than focusing on analysis.
“If our device can both extract and purify the DNA, we can sell it to researchers,” Dyer added.
For example, Dyer said, extracting DNA from an organism in a chunk of ground beef could be very tedious and time-consuming.
Dyer said the company is in the process of writing a proposal for an engineer, which they hope to have completed within a month.
A prototype for the device could be done within a year.
“We also have market researchers out there now polling all of the food processors in the nation to see what their needs are,” he added.
Dyer’s wife, Beth, will have an influence on the device as well. She owns and operates East Side Animal Hospital in East Peoria and plans to use it to test for pet food contaminants.
Dyer said pet food ingredients can be complex, and there is lots of opportunity for contamination and foreign objects, such as rubber, glass or plastic.
“An in-house device would save the pet owners money because they wouldn’t have to be billed for off-site lab tests and could have same-day results,” Dyer said.
Dyer added recent recalls involving Ol’ Roy and Pedigree dog food were due to chemical additives, which the device does not pick up.
“My wife has a Ph.D. in pathology and toxicology, and her experience in vet diagnostics could even cover larger animals such as livestock,” Dyer remarked.
Dyer said his space in the technology incubator at the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center has proved beneficial as well.
“Just to be able to bounce ideas off of other scientists or business minds, even if they are in an unrelated field, is a huge networking opportunity,” he commented.
Dyer said his company is fortunate to have access to the libraries and ag labs at Bradley University and a vast array of IT services.
“It’s also pretty cheap rent,” Dyer added.
Dyer said one of the future company goals is to forge a relationship with homeland security with their device and secure contracts with the FDA, USDA, CDC and many other government and military agencies.
“We could even adapt it so you don’t have to have much technical skill and the average family or consumer could use it,” Dyer added.
“That would be very exciting,” he said.
