Reading Scientific Services Limited has run an emergency, expert, analytical service for the food (and several other) industry sectors for many years. Over this time they have investigated the weird, the wonderful and the disturbing. Dr Ellen Norman will review some of these cases and describe the techniques and approaches used in solving the product mysteries - from good old fashioned wet chemistry, through to state of the art mass spectrometry, with a nod to modern immunoaffinity techniques. All these analytical tools have their role to play in helping to identify the causative problem rapidly - because time is money for the RSSL customers struggling to resolve their manufacturing problem. Some cases show that initial appearances can be deceptive, while others demonstrate that people are sometimes more sensitive than analytical instruments.