engleski

Validation and Measurement Uncertainty in Food Microbiology: Differences between Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

The aim of this research is to describe quality control procedures, procedures for validation and measurement uncertainty (MU) determination as an important element of quality assur¬ance in food microbiology laboratory for qualitative and quantitative type of analysis. Accredita¬tion is conducted according to the standard ISO 17025:2007. General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories, which guarantees the compliance with stan¬dard operating procedures and the technical competence of the staff involved in the tests, re¬cently are widely introduced in food microbiology laboratories in Croatia. In addition to quality manual introduction, and a lot of general documents, some of the most demanding procedures in routine microbiology laboratories are measurement uncertainty (MU) procedures and vali¬dation experiment design establishment. Those procedures are not standardized yet even at international level, and they require practical microbiological knowledge, altogether with sta¬tistical competence. Differences between validation experiments design for quantitative and qualitative food microbiology analysis are discussed in this research, and practical solutions are shortly described. MU for quantitative determinations is more demanding issue than qualitative MU calculation. MU calculations are based on external proficiency testing data and internal validation data. In this paper, practical schematic descriptions for both procedures are shown

measurement uncertainty; validation; food microbiology laboratory; qualitative and quantitative measurement

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