Category Archives: eprw

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A Brief Report on the European Pesticide Residue Workshop in Strasbourg, France

By Laszlo Torma
The 8th European Pesticide Residue Workshop (EPRW 2010) was held in Strasbourg, FR on June 20-24, 2010. As usual, EPRW 2010 was a great success and it was a productive and worthwhile meeting.

First, I would like to share a little information about Strasbourg. The city is the capital of region which was part of the Holy Roman Empire and later annexed by France. In more recent history, Alsace changed hands four times between France and Germany in 75 years. Although the historical language of Alsace is Alsatian, a Germanic language, today most Alsatians speak French and only about 40% of the adult population is fluent in Alsatians. Strasbourg is the seat of several European Institution such as the European Parliament, the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights) and others.

Back to the meeting; EPRW meets every 2 years and in my opinion, it gets better and larger each time. In spite of the global economic down turn, there were about 500 participant and 30 exhibitors representing all the continents. The Scientific Organizing Committee has assembled a great program, including 29 oral presentations, more than 200 posters and a number of vendor sessions. Scientists from all over the world were represented and participated in various discussions to exchange new ideas in the area of pesticide regulations, residue monitoring, new analytical techniques and methodology. I enjoyed the high quality posters that have been presented. These posters demonstrated the desire of many scientists to share their practical and fundamental know how with the participant during the workshop. And last but certainly not least, I had the opportunity to work with our European distributor, LCTech from Germany and to visit with our mutual customers.

ameritech, analytica, analytical technologies, chromatographic specialties, cromatec, eprw, laprw, lctech, pickering, wctow

International Connections, by Laszlo Torma

The “Pickering Brand”

The “Pickering Brand” is well known all over the world. Thanks to our customers and our dedicated distributers, Pickering Laboratories instruments and methods are utilized in more and more countries. In order for us to offer better service and communication we have been expanding our participation at international meetings.

Pickering Laboratories is regularly represented at the Latin American Pesticide Residue Workshop (LAPRW). The first LAPRW was held in Brazil (2007) and Wendy Rasmussen and I were representing our company. We worked with Roberto de Souza Cruz of Cromatec. The second LAPRW (2009) was in Argentina and David Mazawa and I were representing Pickering Laboratories. We visited our distributer Victorio Bogunovich of Analytical Technologies. We had great cooperation from Analytical Technologies; sharing booth space during the meeting and were able to visit their facility. In Argentina the level of interest and knowledge of participants was much better than the first workshop. At both meetings we had the pleasure to meet lots of interesting people. In Latin America, like other parts of the world many Laboratories are struggling to purchase high performance and high cost instruments. In Argentina during a general discussion, many people expressed their anger about the very high cost of instruments like LC/MS/MS and requested reliable methods with affordable instruments. Latin American countries are using large amounts of glyphosate and are interested in reliable analytical methods in crop and environmental samples. It seems to me that glyphosate is an emotional and political issue in Argentina. The next LAPRW meeting is in Montevideo, Uruguay in 2011.

In 2009, David Mazawa attended BCEIA, China’s largest conference on analytical instruments. David worked with our distributer Ameritech and enjoyed meeting potential customers and as well as their hospitality. You can read more about this trip in our January 2010 Newsletter.

Recently Wendy Rasmussen and David Mazawa represented Pickering Laboratories at Analytica in Germany. Analytica is similar to PITTCON but they meet every second year and it has become larger than PITTCON in recent years. Wendy and David were assisting our distributer and business partner LCTech GmbH during the show. They also received training on LCTech’s new products that we are marketing in the USA.

Wendy Rasmussen and David Mazawa represented Pickering Laboratories at Analytica in Germany

Wendy, David, and the LCTech team at Analytica

In April, Wendy and I attended the Western Canada Trace Organic Workshop in Vancouver, Canada. We are presented 2 posters; and Wendy gave a presentation on “Sample Clean-Up with Immunoaffinity columns and Gel Permeation Chromatogphy”. We had a great time and we especially were glad to meet with our distributor, Chromatographic Specialties as well as some current and (hopefully!) future customers. Chromatographic Specialties have a great product range and offer wonderful support all accross Canada.

In June, I will attend the European Pesticide Residue Workshop (EPRW2010) in France. This will be my fourth EPRW meeting. EPRW meets every two years alternating with LAPRW. I will work with our distributor LCTech and visit with our customers. Scientists and pesticide regulators from all over the world will attend this meeting because it is considered by many to be the best pesticide residue workshop. In addition to the Europeans, the attendees are from Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. This meeting allows me an opportunity to visit with laboratory personnel with different scientific backgrounds, from different parts of the world.

And last but not least, we are regularly participating as exhibiters and presenters at PITTCON and AOAC International. Even though these meetings are in the USA there are lots of foreign scientists attending and this gives us additional opportunity to cultivate our relationship with them.