Two French entrepreneurs have launched a portable ‘HalalTest’ that detects the presence of pork in food.
Jean-Francois Julien and Abderrahmane Chaoui first came up with the idea for the portable test (which is aptly named HalalTest) whilst at university, when Julien was in the midst of developing tests for people suffering from food intolerances and allergies, Reuters reports.
"Abderrahmane tells me 'you know, food allergies and food intolerance are very interesting of course but you should really diversify yourself in animal proteins'," Julien told Reuters. "That's when we got the idea to develop a specific anti-body for porcine DNA."
The test is somewhat similar in size to a pregnancy test, and comes with a small test tube where the food sample is mixed with warm water. A test strip is then inserted into the mixture, delivering a result within a two minute time frame.
HalalTest has been released under the pair’s company, Capital Biotech, and Julien and Chaoui say that no other test on the market allows the end user to analyse the food at as easily and cost effectively at their's. Julien and Chaoui state that the tests cost 6.9 euros per unit, and that they are 99 percent accurate.
The company had already received 10,000 pre-orders for the testing kit prior to its launch on Wednesday last week.
Julien and Abderrahmane, have also launched an alcohol test, and are in the process of developing several other tests for food intolerance sufferers.