Capability of laboratories to determine core nutrients in foods: results of an international proficiency test |
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Authors: | Stephen W C Chung Jeff C H Tran W W Wong |
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Institution: | (1) Food Research Laboratory, Centre for Food Safety, Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, 4/F Public Health Laboratory Centre, 382 Nam Cheong Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong;(2) Hong Kong Accreditation Service, Innovation and Technology Commission, 36/F Immigration Tower, 7 Gloucester Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong |
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Abstract: | A proficiency test (PT) to assess the capabilities of laboratories to determine nutrients in a biscuit sample was carried
out in September 2009. The need for such interlaboratory comparison arose from an increasing nutrition labeling requirements
of different countries around the world. Forty-eight laboratories worldwide participated in this PT program for the determination
of total lipids, saturated fat, trans-fat, protein, sugars, total dietary fiber (TDF), ash and sodium in food. This program
was organized under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (APLAC). APLAC considers PT programs
as one of the objective means of assessing the performance of the accredited laboratories. The program is one of the APLAC
PT series whose primary purposes are to establish mutual agreement on the equivalence of the operation of APLAC member laboratories
and to provide an opportunity to identify testing deficiency so that corrective actions can be taken, if necessary. The results
of this program indicated that the consensus mean values estimated by robust statistics were in good agreement with the corresponding
values obtained in the homogeneity tests except for trans-fat and TDF. The relative standard deviations of participant results
for trans-fat and TDF were also found to be higher (19 and 24%, respectively) than the other test parameters. The relative
standard deviations for other test parameters were less than 10%. One-half of the laboratories obtained satisfactory z-scores
(| z | < 3) (\left| z \right| < 3) for all their reported results. Although participants were instructed to provide the measurement uncertainties of their reported
results, only 27.5% of them had done so. Albeit many of the measurement uncertainties appear to be reasonable, some of them
were found to vary widely, indicating that some laboratories still have difficulties in estimating measurement uncertainties.
Although the overall measurement capability can be considered to be satisfactory, there is still room for improvement of analytical
procedures. |
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