The advancement of the assessment of food quality control as stressed by recent developments in analytical chemistry

Several aspects of food quality control (identity and quality) are discusse d in this paper. Besides official and traditional methods, which are often time consuming and not always suitable to obtain an adequate description of the analysed food, a number of new methods have been developed within the last few years. The development of analytical methods depends on the develo pment of analytical instrumentation and more accurate knowledge about food composition. Recent trends in food analysis control are to limitate at mini mum sample manipulation and to reduce solvent utilisation. Thus, Supercriti cal Fluid Extraction, Solid Phase and Solid Phase Micro Extraction advantag es are discussed, as well as a new analytical approach such as Hyphenated T echniques in Chromatography (LC-GC, LC-LC-GC) applied to trace analysis (PA Hs), or volatile compounds stripping and GC-MS analysis applied to honey cl assification, aided by chemometric methods.