THE CONTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL REFERENCE LABORATORIES OF GENERAL CHEMICAL STATE LABORATORY TO FOOD SAFETY

摘要

An important aspect of the official food control, carried out by the State Authorities in order to enforce the legislation of food hygiene and safety, is sampling and laboratory analysis. In order to ensure the uniformity and high quality oh the analytical results the European Union has established the institution of Community and National Reference Laboratories. Six laboratories of the General Chemical State Laboratory (GCSL) have been designated as National Reference Laboratories (NRL) in the fields of Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons, Genetically Modified Foods, Food Contact Materials, Residues of plant protection substances, Heavy Metals and Mycotoxins. The responsibilities of the NRLs are to collaborate with the Community reference laboratory in their area of competence, to coordinate the activities of official laboratories of the country, to organize comparative tests between the official national laboratories and provide scientific and technical assistance to the competent authorities for the implementation of coordinated control plans. The activities of the NRLs of GCLS are presented in detail. The participation of GCSL laboratories in the network of NRLs has many advantages: The laboratories are in contact with internationally acclaimed European laboratories in their scientific area, obtain and use state of the art equipment, participate in the development and validation of analytical methods thus increasing the experience of their staff, and participate in proficiency testing schemes and comparative tests organized by the Community reference laboratories. The experience acquired by the NRLs of GCSL is exploited for the analysis of official food control samples both from the internal market and during import from third countries. The contribution of National Reference Laboratories to the management of incidents involving the presence of chemical risks in foodstuffs is worth mentioning. Examples of such cases are the presence of mineral oil in sunflower oil from Ukraine, the presence of nicotine in dried mushrooms from China and the presence of morpholine in fruits imported to the E.U.