Webinar on Measurement Uncertainty in Food Microbiological Testing

Microbiological testing is carried out for food and feed samples, to determine the quality and safety of the product. In microbiological analysis the result is obtained by counting individual live organisms which are rarely distributed randomly in a food matrix. It is due to these reasons that, there is an uncontrollable ‘variation without a cause’ that accompanies the counts, which alters the situation for microbial enumerations. Therefore, unlike in chemical analysis, where the uncertainty of the analytical procedure and the uncertainty of the final result of analysis are usually the same, measurement of uncertainty in microbiological analysis requires a different approach.

The webinar will cover the basic concept of measurement of uncertainty in microbiological testing and calculation of uncertainty for selective parameters. The revised standard of ISO 17025 introduces a concept of ‘Decision Rule’ while reporting the result, which also will be explained.

Speaker : Dr. Priti Amritkar has done her Doctorate in Chemical Technology from ICT (formerly UDCT), Mumbai. She has been working in the analytical testing field since 2006 and is currently the Director Labs, at Envirocare Labs Pvt. Ltd. Residue testing, nutritional testing, method development and method validation are some of the key areas of her interest. She works as a technical assessor in the field of environment and residue analysis for NABL, and is an FSSAI master trainer for pesticide and mycotoxin analysis in foods.