Reference Materials: Are they fit-for-purpose for food analysis?

The European Commission's JRC Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) promotes the harmonisation and standardisation of measurements relating to the study of food, the environment and biotechnology by offering an extended range of services (reference materials, method validation, proficiency testing schemes, etc) to the measurement community. Providing customers with state-of-the-art certified reference materials (CRMs) for calibration and method validation is pivotal in this context. Today a number of reputed suppliers offer high quality CRMs for a wide range of application in food, environmental, and clinical chemistry/biochemistry. Nevertheless, the demand for new CRMs is on the increase due to the fact that legislation has introduced various limits and statutory values which have to be met in an attempt to protect consumers, to guarantee fair competition, etc. In order to keep pace with this development CRM procedures have to develop smart strategies for producing materials that are fit-for-purpose and match the natural state of the matrix as appropriately as possible. Besides those technicalities time-to-market and cost effectiveness are other important issues. Networking and co-ordination of work programmes among procedures of CRMs is therefore an absolute necessity to supply the measurement community, which is confronted with ever increasing requirements for high analytical data quality, with suitable quality assurance tools.

ULBERTH Franz;  EMONS Hendrik; 

2006-01-31

SPRINGER VERLAG

JRC32549

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC32549,