Development of methods of analysis for monomers and other starting substances with SML and/or QM limits in directives 90/128/EEC and 92/39/EEC

A European consortium of 13 laboratories from 9 different Member States, under die co-ordination of the 'Fraunhofer-Institute of Food Technology and Packaging' (FhILV) Freising, Germany and the main partner 'TNO-Nutrition and Food Research' Zeist, The Netherlands, has elaborated 33 pre-validated methods of analysis for the determination of the specific migration of a selection of monomers listed with restriction in Directives 90/128/EEC and 92/39/EEC. In order to allow the establishment of European wide accepted and agreed test methods, the project structure included the involvement of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), in particular of the Technical Sub-Committee CEN SC 194/SC 1 "General chemical methods of test for materials intended to come into contact with food". 33 of the established analytical methods have been presented to the working group (WG) 2 'Methods of test for monomers' of CEN TC 194/SC 1 which has approved 23 methods as technically suitable for publicati on as pre-norms. The remaining 10 methods are currently awaiting this CEN approval. Taking the multi-national project structure and the above described involvement of CEN TC 194/SC 1/WG 2 into account, the co-ordinators and all other project participants consider the presented methods to be accepted as European wide agreed analytical methods for specific migration determination of the respective monomers. The project consortium proposes the methods to the European Commission for recommendation as "generally agreed" or as "useful" methods of analysis to the Member States.