An analytical testing protocol is fundamental to any food product acceptance testing program, including those for examining the microbiological safety of ready-to-eat salad.
During last decade, a few novel intervention technologies were successfully developed, approved by regulatory agencies and applied as inactivation steps to enhance food safety.
At present, there is no oversight of food laboratories. We do not know the total number of food laboratories, whether the people performing the testing were trained adequately or what type of quality control processes, if any, are employed. Is proficiency testing the answer?