Standard Sample Description ver. 2.0

Data collection is an important task of EFSA and a fundamental component of risk assessment. In order to facilitate reporting of occurrence data to EFSA from several food safety domains the Working Group on Standard Sample Description (SSD) Extension extended the previously published EFSA guidance “Standard Sample Description for Food and Feed” to cover additional data collection domains such as zoonotic agents in food and animals, antimicrobial resistance and food additives. This document provides specifications aimed at harmonising the collection of analytical data on chemical substances and microbiological agents in different matrices of non human nature (e.g. food, feed, animals, water, environmental samples and food contact materials). The revised Standard Sample Description also includes updated lists of standardised data elements, which are items describing characteristics of samples or analytical results such as country of origin, product, analytical method, limit of detection and test result. The final output of this working group is a standard model to transmit sample data from several food safety domains to EFSA.