Residues of Mineral Oil and Synthetic Hydrocarbons in Food

Maurus Biedermann is a Chemical Analyst and Laboratory Head at the Official Food Control Authority of the Canton of Zurich. He has more than 30 years of experience in food analysis and was involved in the development of large volume on-column GC injection and the on-line coupling of HPLC with GC.

Jan Cardon is a Commercial Engineer and he has been working in different positions for paper and board converting associations, both at the Belgian and European level since 1989. Currently he is Technical Advisor of ECMA and from the staff side in charge of the ECMA Food Safety Committee. Within this platform of committed senior experts, the FCM related sector positions are defined and guidance is provided for the membership.

Thomas Gude is Managing Director of Thomas Gude GmbH, which specialises in consulting in the areas of food contact materials, food and non-food. After about 30 years with authorities, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and a long time as the operational manager of a Swiss laboratory, he now deals with risk assessments, especially in the food contact and consumer goods sector. In addition, he teaches at various universities and technical colleges, in particular at ETH Zurich.

Rüdiger Helling worked as Head of the Food Contact Materials and Consumer Goods Section at the Saxon State Laboratory for Public and Veterinary Health for 14 years and is member of several scientific advisory committees. In his current position as Head of Division at the Saxon State Ministry for Social Affairs and Cohesion he is responsible for the whole diversity of not only contaminants in food.

Alexander Montoya-Arroyo has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the DTU-National Food Institute, at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) since 2024. He is part of the Research Group Analytical Food Chemistry and the European Reference Laboratory for Processing Contaminants. Earlier he studied Food Technology at the University of Costa Rica and obtained his Masters degree in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica. Afterwards he received his PhD in Human Nutrition at the University of Hohenheim, Germany.

Lydia Richter is a Food Chemist and Head of Laboratory at the Chemical and Veterinary Official Control Laboratory (CVUA) Stuttgart. Her main area of work is focused on method development for gas chromatography analysis of FCM and body contact materials and supervision of the research project for the establishment of mineral oil analysis at CVUA Stuttgart. She is a member of the ‘German BfR Committee on Consumer Products’

Birgit Schindler operates and generally manages the business of PROOF-ACS from the very beginning in 2013 until today. She has in-depth, hands-on experience in analytical method development in complex matrixes and in method validation. As a research scientist she published several articles in high-ranking international journals. She has multi-annual experiences with External Quality Assessment Schemes from both perspectives: of the participant as well as of the organiser.

Thomas Simat has been a Professor and the Chair of Food Science and FCM at the Technische Universität Dresden with research on FCM since 2003. He is the Chairman of the ‘German BfR Committee on Consumer Products’’.

Suzy Sumner is based in Brussels for foodwatch international. She is responsible for bringing the foodwatch campaigning voice to the core of the EU and making foodwatch better known among some of the key players in and around the EU institutions. She monitors what is happening at EU level and is also part of many of the campaign teams feeding in the EU dimension. Suzy is particularly interested in what happens behind the scenes in the EU bubble and bringing more transparency to decision making.

Veerle Vanheusden is a Policy Officer in DG SANTE of the European Commission. She joined the European Commission in 2013, where she worked for four years in the Unit “Pesticides and Biocides”. In 2017 she moved to the Unit dealing with food processing technologies and novel foods, where her main area of activity is the EU policy and legislation on contaminants. She has previously worked in the private pharmaceutical sector.