The Validation is the term referred to the procedures adopted and developed by the laboratories, in order to assure the reliability of analytical methods. This procedure is essential to certify an analytical method, according to the International Standard ISO/IEC 17025:2005, and for assuring the method quality and performances. Different approaches have been proposed to carry out a complete validation, and it is probable to verify different interpretations of the reference Normative and/or of the technical terminology, also due to the different application fields. As a consequence, a laboratory working in food safety may run into difficulties during the development of a full validation. In this monograph, a simplified guideline for the validation of chromatographic methods in food safety is presented. The correct interpretation of the most important terms, such as accuracy, trueness, ruggedness, measurement uncertainty, selectivity, specificity, etc. has been reported, together with some practical examples related to the chromatographic methods adopted in food safety, and with the post-validation implementations.

Dr. Marco Iammarino is a Food Technologist and Chemical Surveyor. Since 2002, he has been a Researcher of Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Puglia e della Basilicata of Foggia (Italy). He deals with food quality and safety, analytical chemistry applied to food analysis, research & development and analytical methods validation.