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What are the minimum USD capital and operating costs of a non-accredited lab that is as automated as possible, and does absolutely nothing but test random batch

What are the minimum USD capital and operating costs of a non-accredited lab that is as automated as possible, and does absolutely nothing but test random batch samples of formula 24x7x365? Crowdsource/co-op the funding of such a lab, those who fund it get the results first, and choose their own private, independent decisions based upon those results. Route around the damage caused by lobbying and regulatory capture, and own up to self-policing of quality instead of relying upon accreditation and the agency problem of running a for-profit QA lab constantly bidding upon contracts.

XorNot 4y ago
If you were going this path, I'd say you're not thinking big enough. In rice packaging for example, literally every single grain is inspected: there's an automated imaging system which analyses the grains as they are fired through the air by air pressure, and a deflector system which emits a puff of air to kick rejected grains into the discard pile - literally grain by grain. We should be trying to do this for everything, but formula in particular: ideally tin-by-tin we would be testing samples and barcoding the accreditation data onto them. That's the challenge here.
- yourapostasy 4y ago
  That's awesome, I love hearing about applied technology like that, thank you! I wonder what they do with the discard pile? Contaminated soil, use of pesticides containing dangerous metals, and leaching from manufacturing equipment and packaging are the main sources of heavy metals in baby formula. We should be testing those aspects like soil down to the per square meter samples, production line sampling, and packaging sampling, all as an integral part of the supply chain quality assurance process. The better testing methodologies for heavy metals in food are atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS), inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), or inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the operational details to understand whether those methodologies can be packaged into a reliable, accurate, precise miniaturized form factor aimed specifically at testing formula to simplify the sampling aspects. I imagine sampling contamination might be a big issue with a miniaturized tester, along with an entire host of other challenges. There might even be limits of physics I'm unaware of that entirely prohibit miniaturization; the test equipment I'm aware of are benchtop at best in size, not handheld with maybe a smartphone front-end (to leave a screen out of the BOM).

XorNot 4y ago

If you were going this path, I'd say you're not thinking big enough. In rice packaging for example, literally every single grain is inspected: there's an automated imaging system which analyses the grains as they are fired through the air by air pressure, and a deflector system which emits a puff of air to kick rejected grains into the discard pile - literally grain by grain. We should be trying to do this for everything, but formula in particular: ideally tin-by-tin we would be testing samples and barcoding the accreditation data onto them. That's the challenge here.

yourapostasy 4y ago
That's awesome, I love hearing about applied technology like that, thank you! I wonder what they do with the discard pile? Contaminated soil, use of pesticides containing dangerous metals, and leaching from manufacturing equipment and packaging are the main sources of heavy metals in baby formula. We should be testing those aspects like soil down to the per square meter samples, production line sampling, and packaging sampling, all as an integral part of the supply chain quality assurance process. The better testing methodologies for heavy metals in food are atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS), inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), or inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the operational details to understand whether those methodologies can be packaged into a reliable, accurate, precise miniaturized form factor aimed specifically at testing formula to simplify the sampling aspects. I imagine sampling contamination might be a big issue with a miniaturized tester, along with an entire host of other challenges. There might even be limits of physics I'm unaware of that entirely prohibit miniaturization; the test equipment I'm aware of are benchtop at best in size, not handheld with maybe a smartphone front-end (to leave a screen out of the BOM).