Growing Prevalence of Foodborne Diseases Driving the Growth of Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market

Strict food safety regulations to drive the Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market during the forecast period. Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market size was $16,114 million in 2020, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period 2021-2026.

Increasing challenges in food supply chain, financially motivated malpractices, cross-contamination cases, non-compliance with labelling laws, and others factors have led to increased cases of food infections. Lack of proper hygiene practices during production, transportation and storage, lack of awareness of allergens are the factors aid to rise in foodborne illness. According to World Health Organization (WHO), every year worldwide unsafe, unhygienic food causes around 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420,000 deaths. To prevent this and build a healthy society, governments all over the world are implementing stringent food safety regulations and agencies to ensure food safety. Recently, Chinese government has increased fine up to 10 times for company's who violate food safety or even fraudulent food advertising. These activities will be considered as intentional/ very serious illegal acts. The Food safety and Inspection service (FSIS) of United States Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) serve a vital role in ensuring food safety in the United States. FSIS is a public health agency that is responsible to ensure the U.S. commercial supply of poultry, meat and processed egg products are safe, wholesome and are correctly labelled and packed. The FDA is responsible of protecting public health by analysing the foods (other than meat from livestock, poultry and egg products that are regulated by FSIS), dietary supplements, cosmetics, human and veterinary drugs, vaccines, other biological products are safe, sanitary and are properly labelled and packed. CDC leads the federal efforts to collect data on foodborne diseases, and track the efficacy of prevention and control measures in reducing foodborne diseases. CDC plays a vital role in building epidemiology, laboratory and environmental health in local and state health departments to promote monitoring and outbreak response of foodborne illness. 

Food testing and analysis is vital aspect of the environment for food quality to assure that the food is safe to consume. This includes improving the food testing network, quality assurance for food samples, investing in human resources, inspection and educating consumers. With an increasingly growing consumption of paced foods, and growing awareness on the importance of food safety are the factors boosting the market for food safety testing equipment. The rising food safety concerns owing to the increase in foodborne diseases is fuelling the market growth. About 30% of foodborne death occur among children aged under 5 years. It is estimated that 33 million of healthy lives are lost owing to eating unsafe food globally every year, and this number is likely an underestimation. Rise in consumer awareness on food safety, increase in chemical and microbial contamination and technological advancements in laboratory equipment and rapid inspection are boosting the market growth. In order to gain more profits, manufacturers sometimes sells expired food and do not provide proper description that leads to food infections.

North America holds a major share of Food Safety Testing Equipment and Consumables Market owing to the increasing consumption of packed food items, growing demand for ready-to-eat-food/ beverage, high penetration of processed food items, stringent rules by various agencies like FDA, CDC and other in this region. Technological advancements, increased budgetary funding for food safety testing and stringent regulations by government are major factors driving the market in this region. Growing demand for instrument-based testing coupled with technological advancements and regulations on GMO aid to the industry growth. For instance, Health Canada is responsible for assessing Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) activities that are related to food safety.  CFIA is responsible to impose the food safety policies and standards that Health Canada sets. It works with governments, industry and consumers to establish, regulations, policies and other standards related to safety and nutritional quality for all the foods sold in Canada. Health Canada and CFIA conducts regular surveillance of the levels of chemical contaminants in the food supplied in Canada. 

The food testing industry have faced a multiple challenges in terms of wage issues and labour shortage. Without proper testing of foods many foods are being wasted and so is time and money. In order to reduce time, cost of testing and limitations related to technologies, various technological advancements in spectrophotometry and chromatography took place. Innovative instrumental techniques like Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy, Mass spectroscopy, ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) are used to ensure food safety. For instance, Agilent Technologies Inc. launched two new mass spectrometry (MS) products such as the Agilent 6470B Triple Quadrupole LC/MS (6470 LC/TQ) system, and the Agilent RapidFire 400 system. This system used in pharma, biopharma, food, environmental, and life science applications. Such developments of advanced technologies for food safety testing is projected to propel the market growth.

Emerging economies like India and China are behaving as strong potential to show growth in the market. The food testing and the laboratory market in the regions have crossed progression stage, and are in line with the western nations now. Lack of skilled labor, technical advancements, and awareness in other developing nations are likely to shorten and act as driver for the market. FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) has developed an IT solution for Indian food laboratory network known as InFoLNet. It is a centralized laboratory management system (LMS) that connects and collates the network of all the laboratories. The information on the InFoNet helps to categories laboratories on basis of purpose, such as for routine testing, regularity requirements and others. Besides of being the vital part LMS also integrated to other IT solutions of FSSAI like FLRS (Licensing and Registration), FICS (Import Clearance), FosTAC, and others. Through its Scientific Panel on Methods of Sampling and Analysis, FSSAI involves in revision of the current testing methods and new parameters for analysis of several food articles. Being as a vital part of food safety ecosystem, it has formed a network of 232 laboratories to carry out its mandate on food safety testing and analysis. The network includes 142 primary food testing labs from both government and private, 72 state food testing labs and 18 referral labs that are under direct control of FSSAI.

In 2018, Biomerieux has acquired a majority of stake in Hybiome (China). Suzhou Hybiome Biomedical Engineering Co. Ltd is specialized in automated immunoassay test. In June 2019, Biomerieux has announced an increase in its shareholding as it acquires additional 13% stake for about 20 million euros in Hybiome, with this BioMerieux now holds 67% of shares in Hybiome.

The major companies in the Immunotoxin market include Agilent Technologies Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, PerkinElmer Inc, Bruker Corporation, Qiagen N.V., Roka Bioscience, E.I. Dupont De Nemours, Biomerieux, 3M.

Over the years, companies have mainly focused on offering a wide range of products for Food safety testing and have vast geographical presence globally, thereby augmenting their respective positions in the market. Manufacturers in this market are involved into the production of more Food Safety Testing Equipment which are preferred by healthcare officials. Rising number new manufacturers producing Food Safety Testing Equipment are set to increase in the degree of competition are the major factors set to buoy the Immunotoxin market during 2021-2026.