Special Issue 9302 - Analytical Quality Assurance and Good laboratory Practice in dairy laboratories

Publication description

Proceedings of an International Seminar (Sonthofen, Germany) 18-20 May 1992

Analytical Quality Assurance and Good Laboratory Practice in dairy laboratories are topics that are constantly growing in importance. At first glance, such general topics may seem like a small part of the increasingly sophisticated world of laboratory research. But experience in many interlaboratory studies at national and international level in the past has demonstrated that besides standardized and validated methods (which cannot alone guarantee the comparability of measurements), analytical quality assurance plays a key role for the reliability of laboratory results. Introduction of systematic quality assurance (and/or - in special cases - good laboratory practice) procedures for the analytical work itself is now expected to become a requirement for (worldwide) confidence in laboratories and for the acceptance of results. In future, laboratory accreditation as an important instrument for the dairy industry to strengthen confidence in laboratory results, will only be possible on the basis of such quality assurance principles.
The object of this work is to encourage a decisive improvement in the reliability of laboratory analysis by implementing quality assurance in laboratories and thereby strengthen the confidence in results of analysis especially in international trade, and to have an impact on international standardization and validation of analytical methods.
The role of quality assurance in the comparability and reliability of dairy laboratory measurements is examined in sections on basic needs and concepts (3 chapters), general requirements (4 chapters), intralaboratory (8 chapters) and interlaboratory aspects (8 chapters) for dairy institutes, aspects for central testing laboratories (7 chapters) and aspects for dairy factory laboratories (8 chapters), together with 14 briefer contributions, making 53 chapters in all.
Available in the format of a photocopy