Spice and Ingredient Importers Editing and Proofreading Services

The certificate of analysis says the consignment conforms. It reports moisture, ash, volatile oil and a microbiological panel, all within specification. It does not report anything that would detect the addition of a cheaper material to a valuable one, because nobody tested for that — and the whole history of this trade says that is where the risk lives.

We edit what spice and ingredient importers produce — certificates of analysis and specification documents, supplier approval and audit documentation, authenticity and adulteration testing programmes, purchase contracts and quality terms, customer technical documentation, incoming goods and release procedures, traceability records, and correspondence with laboratories and customers. Our editors work on documents that have to say what was not tested as clearly as what was.

The certificate of analysis is the document a customer relies on, and its failure is a page of conforming results that does not disclose the shape of the testing. A certificate showing only what passed tells a reader nothing about what was looked for. We work through these so every result is reported with the method and its limit of detection, since "not detected" without a limit is a statement about the laboratory rather than the material; so the parameters tested are listed alongside the parameters in the specification that were not tested on this consignment, because a customer assuming a full panel is the origin of most disputes; so any authenticity testing is described by what it can and cannot detect, given that a method targeting three known adulterants will not see a fourth and the trade's history is a sequence of fourth ones; so the sampling is described — how many packages, from where in the consignment, composited or individual — as a certificate on a single grab sample describes that sample; so the material tested is tied to the consignment by lot and container identifiers; so the laboratory and its accreditation scope for these methods is named; so results near a limit are reported with the measurement uncertainty; and so the supplier's own certificate is distinguished from independent testing. Certificates written this way are worth what a customer believes they are worth.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including test results, supplier information, contracts and customer correspondence. We are editors rather than analysts, food scientists or regulatory advisers, and we offer no view on authenticity, test results or compliance. What we can do is make the certificate disclose the shape of the testing.