Abstract
During recent years, a rising interest from consumers and various governmental organizations towards the quality of food has continuously been observed. Human intervention across the different stages of the food supply chain can lead to the presence of several types of chemical contaminants in food‐based products. On a normal daily consumption basis, some of these chemicals are not harmful; however, for those that present a risk to consumers, legislation rules were established to specify tolerance levels or in some cases the total forbiddance of these specific contaminants. Hence, the use of appropriate analytical tools is recommended to properly identify chemical contaminants. In that context, mass spectrometry (MS)‐based techniques coupled or not to chromatography offer a vast panel of features such as sensitivity, selectivity, quantification at trace levels, and/or structural elucidation. Because of the complexity of food‐based matrices, sample preparation is a crucial step before final detection. In the present manuscript, we review the contribution and the potentialities of MS‐based techniques to ensure the absence of chemical contaminants in food‐based products. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Mass Spec Rev 30:1073–1095, 2011