[Recent advances in the application of high performance capillary electrophoresis for food safety]

In recent years, food safety incidents become a serious social problem. Foods are usually complex mixtures consisting of a large diversity of molecules. Analysis of foods is a topic that demands the development of rapid, robust, efficient, sensitive and cost-effective analytical methodologies. Therefore, new techniques for food safety purpose are required by analytical chemists. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a popular separation technique that possesses fast and efficient performances in an automated way with minimum consumption of sample and reagents. Nowadays, CE represents a desired strategy for the determination of many compounds or molecules in various kinds of food. In this paper, the review intends to provide the recent innovative developments reported in food safety analysis using CE methods for a full overview. As a fundamental review, it focuses on the introduction and detection of several common hazardous materials existing in food such as non-food additives, pesticide residues, veterinary drug residues, heavy metal ion contaminants, toxins, biphenol A and phthalates in packaging materials and so on. Furthermore, this review prospects the main development direction of CE in this field for the future. A total of 63 papers published during the period of Jan 2009 - Jun 2012 are included in the present review.