In response to the Food Safety Modernization Act, federal and state agencies across the U.S. are developing criteria for sharing food and feed safety regulatory data. ISO accreditation alone will not improve data equivalency across all laboratories. Samples of known quality and equivalency must be provided to these laboratories. The samples must truly represent the commodity of interest. When prepared for analysis within the laboratory, sample and analyte integrity must be maintained. Without this important foundation, data equivalency can never be realized no matter how many laboratories are accredited. Guidance and training is needed to provide accuracy of food/feed sampling activities supporting regulatory programs and consistency in sampling protocols among agencies. Improvements in sampling are necessary to achieve data quality and defensibility. Close communication and coordination must be maintained between the laboratory and sampling. This presentation will explore what is known about sampling quality, what available data can be used to estimate the error in sampling, what quality control should be added to some sampling programs to estimate sampling error and recommendations for the future.

Guidance to improve sampling quality and accuracy

248th National Meeting (2014)

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