Perspectives from Distributors of Certified Reference Materials

ZRMs for fabricated foods could be easily manufactured following recommendations for development of in-house RM (Craft and Boyer 1993). Batch records, published information, and so on allow the analysts to quickly determine the compositional makeup of fabricated foods and thus to formulate and make a ZRM devoid of a specific micronutrient. 

Perspectives from Distributors of Certified Reference Materials 

The Promochem Group was the first international specialist supplier of certified reference materials (CRMs) and pharmaceutical reference substances used in environmental, medical and trace element analysis. Their experience provides a viewpoint that echoes, reinforces and expands on many of the trends discussed above (Jenks 1997). From the middle of the 1980 s, sales of CRM by Promochem increased between 10 % and 20 % annually, depending on the market sector and application. Since then National and International Metrology Institutes, such as the now privatized U.K. Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC), the European and U.S. Pharmacopoeias, the E.U. IRMM and others have recognized that efficient distribution of RMs, backed by available technical support, is as important as production and certification. Thus, they have moved to spread their influence outside their national origins. The Web and e-commerce will continue to grow as major facilitators of better information dissemination and supply of CRMs. 

In addition to real growth caused by the intelligent use of CRM by informed and aware scientists, there has also been growth by what might be described as negative sales influences (Jenks 1995,1997)- These influences include  

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