International Symposium “Standardisation of non-targeted methods for food authentication“

Authenticity testing of food and feed – the detection of fraudulent or deceptive practices such as substitution of ingredients, adulteration and incorrect labelling – are important and challenging issues food surveillance and industry are confronted with. Therefore, research has been conducted worldwide on the development of rapid analytical approaches and procedures that can help to meet not only current threats but being advanced enough to address emerging challenges e.g. unknown adulterants. A recent strategy which is successfully applied for screening and authenticity testing is based on non-targeted analysis using at least one analytical technique, spectroscopic and/or spectrometric, for data acquisition and subsequently one or more chemometric methods for multivariate statistical evaluation. A lot of effort has been directed in the development of respective analytical procedures often in research and in feasibility studies, whereas further crucial issues such as standardisation and validation are not completely fit for purpose yet. That might be one reason why adaption of the procedure from research into routine application and food surveillance is processing slowly.

The symposium will provide a platform for promoting scientific exchange and discussing open questions in the research field of food and feed authentication using non-targeted methods. The exchangeability of data between laboratories, validation and standardisation of analytical methods and statistical models, as well as system challenges and quality assurance measures are among the key issues that require closer investigation and which will be addressed.

The symposium will be held in English.