Laboratory Standard Operating Procedures

This chapter covers standard operating procedures (SOPs), or best practices, for a general food analysis laboratory. The topics covered in this chapter include the following: balances, mechanical pipettes, glassware, reagents, precision and accuracy, data handling, data reporting, and safety. These procedures apply to all the laboratory experiments in this manual; hence, a thorough review of general procedures is invaluable for successful completion of the laboratory exercises. This chapter begins coverage in the lab manual’s of the basic skills and information necessary for one to be a good analytical food chemist.