Development and application of a standardized validation procedure for food chemistry laboratories

The development of a standard for method validation is a response to the re quirements of many analysts facing to the preparation of validation report for accredited laboratories. The standard that was prepared with the French official standardization organization (Afnor) was very strictly defined. I t consists in three different sets of measurements called design A, B and C . Each of these designs has its own goal, i.e. the computation or the compa rison of validation characteristics. These characteristics are quite classi cal, but the originality of the standard consists in the definition of very precise statistical techniques. Moreover, these techniques were selected i n order to implement them easily on any commercial spreadsheet software. The theoretical background of this standard is explained, an extensive exam ple is presented and some explanations about the computer implementation ar e given. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.