41. The Committee recalled that the issue had first been considered at the its last Session where it had agreed to a number of recommendations and requested the Delegation of the United Kingdom to redraft the paper for consideration at this Session.
42. The Delegation of the United Kingdom presented the referenced paper and expressed concern that the approach developed by ISO[12], and required by a number of accreditation agencies, for the calculation of measurement uncertainty would impose significant additional work and expenditure on food analysis laboratories. He informed the Committee that a project of the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food revealed that in most cases similar uncertainty values were obtained from the collaborative trial data (top-down) and ISO (component-by-component or bottom-up) approaches as outlined in Table 1 of the document CX/MAS 98/7.
43. Most of the delegations who spoke welcomed the paper. There was a general agreement that the ISO approach was not suitable for food analysis laboratories, or too stringent, and that where collaborative study data were available, the use of the ISO approach should not be forced to laboratories for the calculation of measurement uncertainty. Many delegations were of the opinion that information on measurement uncertainty should be made available to customers only when requested and that it would not be made mandatory to include measurement uncertainty in the analytical report.
44. Delegations exchanged views on an appropriate term for “measurement uncertainty”. Several delegations preferred the term “measurement reliability” as the term has positive connotations and the use of the same term as that in the ISO document[13], while not using the ISO approach, would cause confusion. However, several other delegations were in favour of the term “measurement uncertainty” as this term had already been used by a number of international organizations, including ISO, EURACHEM and NMKL.
45. The Delegation of Ireland informed the Committee that the revision of the EURACHEM Guide on Measurement Uncertainty was well advanced and the revised document containing many worked examples would be available in the near future. It was hoped that the final version of the text would address all concerns of this Committee. The Committee was also informed of the publications of NMKL on this matter which provided intermediate measurement of uncertainty.
46. The Committee decided to defer further discussion on this item to a future session pending the publication of the EURACHEM Guide so as to avoid duplication of the work of other international body (see paras 45 & 70-71).
