28. The Committee noted that the Commission at its 21st Session approved the initiation of this work that had been proposed by the Delegation of Austria at the last Session of the Committee. The Delegation of Austria submitted its comments and draft guidelines for reporting analytical results at the Session which contained sections on: name of the parameter; additional information; value and unit; and limit of detection or limit of determination/quantification (in relation to negative results). The Delegation proposed to elaborate the guidelines. The Committee noted that the IUPAC was currently investigating how to report low level results including negative signals and matters related to values and units.
29. It was felt that there were no significant problems for this Committee and therefore, no need to draw up guidelines. If there were problems, Commodity Committees were in better position than this Committee to identify them and they could solve the problems by modifying the specifications in the standards or request guidance from this Committee. When a provision or specification to be tested was not identical to the analyte, how to express the analytical results should be clearly stated in the standard in order to avoid the problem.
30. The Committee agreed to request Commodity Committees to identify how extensive the problem of indirect determinations was in Codex Standards. Based on responses from the Commodity Committees, the Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling might consider elaborating guidance to these Commodity Committees, such as guidelines and appropriate factors. If there were no problems identified, the Committee should seek approval of the Commission to discontinue work in this area.
