Vitamin testing laboratory work remains essential. Between food producers, supplement manufacturers, and animal feed providers, there is a large group of companies that market their goods, based in part, on the vitamin makeup of their products.

For example, an animal feed manufacturer needs to show that their product contains the minimum recommended levels of key nutritional elements to let potential customers know the product will serve its purpose (developing healthy livestock) correctly.

If you’re a supplement manufacturer, and you claim your product offers superior levels of a particular vitamin or mineral, you’ll need documented proof that is actually the case. Revenue for dietary supplements has grown nearly 3 percent annually since 2016, and now commands $36.6 billion in market size. It’s a crowded space, and certified third-party testing is one way for companies to differentiate themselves on store shelves. If testing doesn’t back up marketing claims, your product will fall off quickly.

To get a clear, accurate reflection of their content — and to adhere to nutritional label guidelines for food production — such producers need thorough vitamin testing services to ensure consumers get what they’re expecting. These tests will provide certified results that the products contain the nutritional value they claim. Your labels will be verified through such tests, and become reliable conveyors of information that will resonate and earn trust with consumers.

Learn more about what Barrow-Agee Laboratories can do. Read here for more information about our work with animal feed and poultry testing.

Barrow-Agee Laboratories is More Equipped for Vitamin Testing

A testing services provider for numerous industries, Barrow-Agee Laboratories performs a vast array of tests — timely and accurately — each year. With extensive experience in food and feed safety testing, Barrow-Agee’s capabilities in this realm are certified, proven, and now better than ever thanks to recent re-investments in upgraded testing equipment and processes.

A new HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) instrument, with MS (Mass Spectrometric) detection, is now part of the Barrow-Agee testing profile. Our capabilities here also include fluorescent and UV detection, enabling more options, more accuracy, and more reliability. HPLC is a chromatographic method used to separate a mixture of compounds in analytical chemistry and biochemistry in order to identify, quantify, or even purify the individual components of the mixture.

To put it simply, HPLC will allow for feed or supplement samples to be parsed for their individual vitamin components — A through E. It’s an essential step in guaranteeing accurate nutritional labeling and backing up claims made on supplement packaging.

With the infrastructure additions, Barrow-Agee can also test for low levels, or high levels, of vitamin components. If your animal feed claims to have at least a base amount of vitamin E (be it 4 grams or 4 percent) in its makeup, we can verify it. If your vitamin D supplement claims to provide 3,000 percent of the minimum daily recommendation, we can check to see if that high threshold is met as well.

Barrow-Agee can not only quantify the full spectrum of vitamin content, but we can also quantify amounts of essential minerals — such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, etc. With recently added ICP-OES (Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy) capabilities, a technique in which the composition of elements in samples can be determined using plasma and a spectrometer, we identify if your product is including trace amounts of ‘good’ or necessary minerals — and absent of toxic heavy metals. Due to its renowned reliability, multi-element options, and increased throughput, ICP-OES has become widely accepted as an industry-wide standard technique for both research and for specific analytical purposes.

Learn more here: Read about how environmental pathogen testing helps control contamination in food processing facilities.

How to Begin with Our Testing Laboratories

Barrow-Agee Laboratories is trusted and valued for its respected work in testing. We’ve earned ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accreditation with the American Association of Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), the only independent, internationally recognized accreditation body in the United States that offers a full range of comprehensive conformity assessment services.

We have undergone reviews and testing processes for more than a dozen accreditations, certifications, registrations, and other formal approvals from an assortment of national, state, and industry agencies and organizations. You can find a complete and ever-growing list of all our accreditations and certifications here.

Our team of experts in the many fields of laboratory testing will work quickly and efficiently to make sure your samples are tested and the results sent back to you within the stated turnaround time. We’ll help you maintain operations and make the most of your production process. An expedited analysis is also available as needed. Here’s a brief outline of the sample testing process:

• Contact us to discuss your product testing needs
• Collect the recommended number of samples from your facility
• Complete the Barrow-Agee Laboratories Sample Submission Form
• Ship the completed form and samples to Barrow-Agee Laboratories
• We’ll process the samples within five hours of receipt
• Most test results will be returned via email within five business days

Connect with us to learn more about our vitamin testing capabilities, or more about the full suite of laboratory testing services we offer.