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INFO LETTER
Fruit, vegetables and potatoes
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Issue: 02/2012
Quality Assurance.
From farm to shop.
Editorial
1
Laboratory Performance Assessment
1
From the Advisory Board
2
Safety Note
2
Sanction Board
2
QS-live
3
Portrait of Peter Fehmel
3
QR Codes
3
The Scheme Participant
Gemüsering Stuttgart
4
Scheme Participants and Markets
4
News in Brief
4
Dear Readers,
One of the claims of the QS scheme is that it
makes food production and marketing as safe
as possible. To ensure that the laboratories
recognized by QS also live up to this claim, a
laboratory performance assessment is con-
ducted twice a year. In the past test, we took
into account that the QS scheme is becoming
more and more international by giving the labs
a citrus fruit to analyze (Page 1).
There is also news from our information cam-
paign “QS-live”, which is why we are placing
special focus on consumer communication in
the QS scheme on Page 3.
And we are again introducing a QS scheme par-
ticipant. We conducted an interview on quality
assurance with Mr. Strissel of Gemüsering Stutt-
gart (Page 4).
We wish you lots of fun with your reading,
Your QS Team
Quality assurance in the QS scheme is in
no way limited to apples and cucumbers.
Producers of lemons and oranges are certi-
fied too. For this reason, the approved labs
in the QS scheme had to deal with a sub-
tropical fruit in the laboratory performance
assessment.
63 laboratories participated in the spring test
which has just been completed successfully, over
60 percent of them from abroad. With its semi-
annual laboratory performance assessment, QS
Qualität und Sicherheit GmbH tests the efficiency
of the labs approved to make residue analyses
in the QS scheme. The laboratories that pass the
test are awarded a qualification certificate which
is often demanded by producers, wholesalers and
the food retail sector as a prerequisite for commis-
sioning them.
By selecting the orange, the most commonly culti-
vated citrus fruit in the world, as the test material,
QS paid due consideration to the fact that more
and more foreign businesses are becoming QS
scheme participants or are becoming eligible to
deliver due to the recognition of comparable stan-
dards. This currently applies to 4,170 businesses.
There was another reason for choosing the
orange as the test material, however. The tes-
ting of oranges for residues is a technical chal-
lenge because acids and waxes make analysis
more difficult. Despite this, 43 laboratories
achieved very good and good results, 21 of
them with the maximum number of points.
None of the laboratories recognized by QS lost
their approval due to poor evaluations.
Jens Schäfer, who is responsible for the labo-
ratory performance assessments at QS, draws
mainly positive conclusions: “The laboratories
recognized by QS work to a high standard, as is
Editorial
LABORATORY PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT
ORANGES PRESS FOR MORE SAFETY
shown by the large number of correct analyses.
More and more active substances can be iden-
tified and also correctly quantified by the labs.
The ones with which this was not fully possible,
however, have to explain how they intend to cor-
rect these deficiencies at short notice”.
One of the substances that had to be detected
was the active ingredient carbendazim, which
almost 30 percent of the laboratories were not
able to clearly detect in the autumn test 2011. It
is therefore all the more pleasing that the latest
results show distinct progress in that all of the
labs identified the substance correctly. Only 40
of the 63 participants were able to determine the
precise quantity of the active substance, howe-
ver. The weed killer 2,4-D (dichlorphenoxyacetic
acid) also proved difficult. It was wrongly quanti-
fied by 19 labs in the test.
In the next laboratory performance assessment
in autumn this year, the laboratories will again
have to prove how good their analysis methods
are.
Passed
Laboratory Performance Assessment with Oranges
Total numbers
of laboratories
Approved
laboratories
Laboratories within
approval procedure
Failed
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Labs
participating
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