FURAN-01

Analysis of furan in baby food

Furan is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as possibly carcinogenic. It can be formed in food as a result of Maillard reaction.

Commission Recommendation 2007/196/EC of 28 March 2007 recommends that Member States perform monitoring of the presence of furan in foodstuffs that have undergone heat treatment. Therefore, the IRMM is organising an interlaboratory comparison to investigate the comparability of analytical results for furan in baby food in Member States laboratories.

Each participant will receive about 15 g of test material and will be requested to perform duplicate analysis using a method of their own choice.

The IRMM carries out this study for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection in support of its activities on monitoring of furan in food.

Participating laboratories can report results at

https://irmm.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ilc/ilcReporting.do

using their laboratory key as password.