On February 6, the 18th meeting of laboratory managers for residue monitoring took place in Berlin. Over 100 participants from all over the world accepted the invitation from QS. The participants came not only from Germany, but also from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Austria, Serbia, Spain and Turkey. In addition to QS-specific topics and interesting specialist presentations, another focus was on the active exchange of information during the scheduled breaks, which were used intensively by the participants.
Dr. Alois Fenneker (Head of Certification Bodies and Laboratories) opened the event with an overview of innovations from the QS scheme. The presentations by Dr. Kempe (consultant for residue analysis of pesticides and veterinary drugs) on the classification of the results of the laboratory performance assessments from 2023 and an overview of current legal developments in residue analysis traditionally framed the other specialist presentations.
Dr. Christian Sieke from the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung BfR) provided information on methods and calculation models for the evaluation of food with regard to acute health risks from pesticide residues. In this context, he discussed the German NVS-II model and the EFSA PRIMo model (version 3.1) for calculating the chronic and acute dietary exposure of consumers to pesticide residues, as well as the evaluation of multiple residues.
Dr. Manol Roussev, an expert in residue analysis, then spoke about hidden pitfalls
in the analysis of pesticide residues in food, as residue analysis also has its limits in practice. In his presentation, Dr. Roussev highlighted various points that should be taken into account in order to prevent or minimize the loss of residues in lab assistants.
In a further presentation, Andreas Hentschel, chairman of the GDCh (German Chemical Society) working group on pesticides, explained the difference between the reporting limit and the limit of quantification and what their use in the test report means.
