“The food lab is a great example where a couple of our groups are working together; the consumer services folks who are out in the field purchasing off the shelf a food basket and they bring it to the food lab. They have the responsibility of checking a number of things, compliance with a lot of regulations, and it all has to do with food safety and food assurance that you are getting what you pay for.

The lab also tests fresh fruit and vegetables for pesticides. We are sort of the last line of defense- there are a lot of stipulations on uses of pesticides etc. into the crop and will be more so with the Food Safety Act. We buy food off the shelf and make sure that there are no issues with it. We also do a lot of work with ground beef and pork and look at the contents for label accuracy. We check on the fat content, any preservatives or added color.
 

We are good quality control check for the industry and the consumer out there buying the food.”