State General Laboratory Annual Report 2019

3 State General laboratory Annual Report 2019 INTRODUCTORY NOTE by the Director of the State General Laboratory Dear readers, Through the annual report of the State General Laboratory (SGL), I am pleased to present to you an assessment of its work, which with a deep sense of responsibility, the management team and its staff, completed during 2019. The stable and continuous effort to implement the national strategic objectives to protect public health, the environment, the safety of citizens and the consumer’s interests is demonstrated within the wide range of activities of the SGL during 2019. 2019 was a year with many challenges and obligations where, SGL, amongst other, managed to:  respond effectively to official control requirements in the areas of food safety and quality, environmental protection (including drinking water) and consumer products, and to support the Police in the fight against crime, by conducting a significant number of laboratory tests,  meet the requests of the Competent Authorities in different Ministries, Governmental Departments and Municipalities, dealing with emergencies, incidents and crises that fall under its competence,  effectively utilise its financial resources and absorb national and European funds for applied research, for the benefit of its further development as an organisation,  exploit all possible forms of cooperation at national, EU and international level to effectively achieve its goals. In the framework of the Public Sector Administration Reform and the implementation of the new Public Finance Management System, the SGL continued the development and implementation of its strategic planning, as well as the parallel monitoring of the implementation of its budget based on its activities. For this purpose it has implemented appro- priate performance indicators for the timely monitoring, implementation and final evaluation of its performance. The SGL, both as a Public Service Department and a well-recognised scientific research center, through the continuous development of innovative and modern methodologies and approaches, within the framework of its strategic objectives and priorities, managed to further upgrade its services, and at the same time, to develop its scientific knowledge and improve its expertise in the areas of its competence. In 2019, the SGL won the "Arne Anderson Award" in the field of Single Residues Methods, which is awarded every two years to the first ranking laboratory among all EU Official and Reference Laboratories participating in the EU Proficiency tests. The most important activities that marked the work of the SGL in 2019, among others, were: a) the continuation of its official control for the surveillance of the Cypriot market for the safety and quality of the food and other consumer products, for the protection of the environment, and contribution to the fight against crime, (b) the continuation of its active involvement in EU research projects (e.g. Health risk assessment from combined human exposure to multiple food-born toxins, Human biomonitoring, Detection and identification of biological toxins, Identification of traditional and local products of Cyprus and the North Aegean, Carobs- the Black Gold of Cyprus, etc.), c) its active contribution to dietary risk assessment at national and European level by processing and evaluating the nutritional data of Cypriots from the "National Dietary Survey of the Cyprus population", and the planning of risk as- sessment studies of the Cypriots, and therefore of the European citizens’ exposure to various chemicals through food, d) the expansion of the official control to new parameters and / or new categories and products,