On the 1 to 4 May 2011, the EURL-AP participated to the 102nd AOCS Annual Meeting and Expo in Cincinnati (USA). As invited speaker, Dr Veys presented a lecture entitled “Defining and characterizing limits of detection for qualitative results: a realistic challenge? Study case in feed microscopy for PAPs detection” to the Agricultural Microscopy Division. This AOCS Division groups American and Canadian feed microscopists as well as from other countries. During this annual meeting, the new edition of the manual “Microscopic Analysis of Agricultural Product”, to which the EURL-AP team collaborated, was promoted by the AOCS. Last but not least, Dr Veys was elected for his contribution in the edition of the manual as Division Vice Chairman for the year 2011-2012. Dr Cruywagen, from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) was elected Division Chairman.

The EURL-AP Annual Workshop took place in Vienna (Austria) on the 6 and 7 April this year. This year the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) network had important discussions on the revision of the official microscopic method. A validation study of a proposed revised method was organized in Autumn 2010. Results from this validation study were presented : improvement of the proficiency was noted thus validating the main modifications. A consensus on a revised protocol was obtained and transmitted on the week after to the DG Sanco. In addition, results of experiments on alternative methods – mainly RT-PCR- were presented too. The outcome of the EUR-AP Interlaboratory Study 2011 was presented. During the workshop a first return on the PCR training session organized by the EURL-AP team revealed to be very positive. Other complementary training will be organized in the next coming month, keeping in mind the strong wish to have as soon as possible an implementation of the PCR methods through the NRL network. On this condition the future revision of the total feed ban could be monitored by the NRLs inside the EU. In this respect the DG Sanco also presented to the NRLs the expectations around the TSE Roadmap II and the conditions prevailing for a species-to-species feed while allowing a safe control on the TSEs. Finally, future perspectives on combinations of methods were presented to the delegations of the Member States. All workshop sessions were animated by a strong scientific mind as well as a truly friendly atmosphere among all participants.