Food Safety and Regulatory Compliance in Europe

It is obvious that food and feed should be safeand wholesome in order to protect the consumerand to ensure animal health and welfare.Animalhealth and welfare are important factors that contributeto the maintenance of food quality and safety.All stakeholders require a risk-based, proportionate,integrated and transparent approach to ’farm to fork’official control across all EU member states and betweenmajor world trading partners.Also consumersand industry require a consistent EU and global approachto food law implementation and enforcementto prevent differences in food safety and tradingconditions developing.To monitor compliance with feed and food lawsamples have to be analysed by laboratories in EUmember states and in other countries who export intothe EU.Many analytical methods applied for suchofficial controls are complex.This is particularly thecase for methods used for the detection of approvedand unapproved additives, veterinary and pesticideresidues and natural and process contaminants.How do we ensure consistency and comparability ofanalytical measurements between laboratories andbetween countries? How do we predict and anticipatethe target analytes that we may have to detectand determine in samples from the food chain nextweek, next month, and next year? As a consequence,how do we prepare analytical methods thatwill be capable of addressing these challenges andhow do we demonstrate that they are robust, validatedand provide data that will withstand challenge?These are problems that are faced by laboratoriesin all trading nations.This article will review theissues, describe a project that aims to anticipateproblems that may affect the food chain in the futureand review approaches that enable laboratories todemonstrate the reliability of their methods of analysisvia the use of validation protocols, reference materialsand proficiency testing schemes.