ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some general guidelines on sampling foodstuffs as well as other forensic exhibits and preparing them for isotopic and elemental analysis. In the field of food forensics it will always be difficult to obtain truly authentic samples. When a researcher goes to extreme trouble to obtain authentic samples. Individual samples from a given manufacturing batch will often appear visually homogeneous whereas samples from different brands may appear markedly different. One consistent feature of all the scallops was the adductor muscle is chosen to be the basis of the sampling strategy. Liquids with low viscosity may flow up the walls of capsules, contaminating the outside of the capsule and potentially the preparation surface and the auto-sampler carousel. Ion-exchange chromatography can also be used to isolate the lead fraction prior to isotope ratio analysis. The combination of analysis/tracer uniquely defines the mass bias corrected isotopic composition of an analyte element.
