As products become more complex and risks evolve faster than ever, food manufacturers need testing strategies that deliver sharper evidence, clearer insights and greater confidence.
What Food Manufacturers Need from Testing in 2026 explores how food testing is evolving to meet these challenges, examining the trends, technologies and strategies that will help manufacturers strengthen quality assurance and make smarter, evidence-based decisions.
Food testing has always been central to safety, quality and compliance. Today, however, its role extends far beyond meeting regulatory requirements.
Manufacturers are navigating increasingly complex ingredient networks, faster reformulation cycles, tougher label claims and growing scrutiny around authenticity, consistency and transparency. As a result, food safety and quality teams must do more than generate results they must interpret data, identify emerging risks and provide the insights needed to support informed business decisions.
The What food manufacturers need from testing in 2026 report examines where food testing goes next as risks move faster and evidence has to work harder.
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You will learn:
- Why manufacturers need testing to reveal hidden risk earlier and strengthen confidence before problems escalate
- How quality leaders are building smarter, risk-led testing programmes where every test has a clear purpose
- How testing data can move beyond retrospective reporting to support operational decisions, trend analysis and continuous improvement
- What changing formulations, food integrity risks and emerging technologies mean for the future of laboratories, QA teams and food testing
With contributions from Darshana Desai Mestry (Pladis UK&I), Nia Owen-Cortez (Mondelez Europe), Tola Alade-Lambo (McCain Foods), Euan Ross (Waters Corporation), Alison Johnson (Food Forensics), Ian Westcott (New Food), the report brings together perspectives from across manufacturing, quality assurance, food integrity, analytical science and food testing.
Read now to explore how food manufacturers are rethinking the evidence behind safety, quality and trust. Because in today’s food industry, confidence has to be proved.
This report is in association with Waters Corporation.
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What food manufacturers need from testing in 2026: smarter decisions, stronger assurance
Topics
- Allergens & free-from risk
- Analytical testing (LC/GC/MS)
- Automation, AI & digital manufacturing
- Contaminants & residues
- Food Forensics
- Food fraud & authenticity
- Food safety & integrity
- McCain
- Mondelēz International
- Pathogens & microbiology
- Pladis
- Process design & scale-up
- Processing & manufacturing
- QA/QC systems (HACCP, FSMS)
- Quality systems & testing
- Rapid methods & microbiology testing
- Waters Corporation
