The National Reference Laboratory

On May 25, 2020, pursuant to art. 100 of Regulation (EU) 625/2017, the Ministry of Health designated the Department of Food Safety, Nutrition and Veterinary Public Health (SANV) of the National Institute of Health (ISS) and the "Struttura complessa di Chimica” of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Puglia e della Basilicata (IZSPB) as the "National Reference Laboratory for the treatment of foods and their ingredients with ionizing radiation".

The designated laboratories, integrating their activities and according to the different institutional skills and tasks, operate to:

• develop and validate analytical methods
• draw up guidelines for the validation of methods
• organize annual inter-comparative tests for the quality assurance of the methods
• provide scientific-technical support to the laboratories involved in the official control
• provide technical-scientific assistance to the Ministry in drawing up the National Control Plan on foods and their ingredients treated with ionizing radiation
• collect and validate official control data through the national informative system for irradiated food, SINAI, developed by the IZSPB
• organize annual workshops for the laboratories 

The Department of Food Safety, Nutrition and Veterinary Public Health collaborates with the Core Facilities (FAST) of the ISS for the development, study and validation of physical methods based on Thermoluminescence (TL) Photo-Stimulated Luminescence (PSL) and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR).