Summary
The Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) has undertaken the development of a range of reference materials designed to meet the principal needs for food analysis and measurement. This work falls within the scope of a general collaborative programme designed to improve measurement accuracy and comparability within Europe.
The development of well characterised food reference materials frequently poses serious difficulties, not only with respect to stability and homogeneity, but also for accurate certification. A pre-requisite for accurate certification is a high level of agreement between the collaborating laboratories, preferably when employing methods based on different principles.
Especially for trace organic analysis, it is necessary to carry-out preliminary intercomparisons of candidate certification methods in order to identify and eliminate the major sources of error. This process is greatly facilitated if the critical steps such as recovery, clean-up and final determination can be studied separately. The paper describes this approach by reference to three milk-powders which were recently certified for their aflatoxin M1 content and presents results for bovine muscle, bovine liver and pig kidney CRMs recently certified for toxic and nutritional element.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
van Egmond HP, Wagstaffe PJ (1985) EUR report 10412, Commission of the European Communities, Luxemburg
Wagstaffe PJ, Griepink B, Hecht H, Muntau H, Schramel P (1986) EUR report 10168 EN, Commission of the European Communities, Luxemburg
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wagstaffe, P.J. The BCR agro-food analysis programme — A systematic approach to certification exemplified by studies on aflatoxin M1 in milk powder and toxic and nutritional elements in meats. Z. Anal. Chem. 326, 679–683 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00473529
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00473529