It is obvious that food and feed should be safe and wholesome in order to protect the consumer and to ensure animal health and welfare. Animal health and welfare are important factors that contribute to the maintenance of food quality and safety.All stakeholders require a risk-based, proportionate,integrated and transparent approach to farm to forkofficial control across all EU member states and between major world trading partners. Also consumers and industry require a consistent EU and global approach to food law implementation and enforcement to prevent differences in food safety and trading conditions developing.To monitor compliance with feed and food law samples have to be analysed by laboratories in EU member states and in other countries who export into the EU. Many analytical methods applied for such official controls are complex. This is particularly the case for methods used for the detection of approved and unapproved additives, veterinary and pesticide residues and natural and process contaminants.How do we ensure consistency and comparability of analytical measurements between laboratories and between countries? How do we predict and anticipate the target analytes that we may have to detect and determine in samples from the food chain next week, next month, and next year? As a consequence, how do we prepare analytical methods that will be capable of addressing these challenges and how do we demonstrate that they are robust, validated and provide data that will withstand challenge?These are problems that are faced by laboratories in all trading nations. This article will review the issues, describe a project that aims to anticipate problems that may affect the food chain in the future and review approaches that enable laboratories to demonstrate the reliability of their methods of analysis via the use of validation protocols, reference materials and proficiency testing schemes.