Measurement science for food and drug monographs: toward a global system.

This article continues USP's public dialogs about applications of modern measurement science (metrology) to public or private specifications (monographs) of food and drug articles. An objective of the discussion is to promote understanding of traceability and uncertainty of measurement results. Adoption of modern metrologic principles helps ensure that a measurement of one or more property values (attributes) of a food or drug article are acceptable without regard to when (time), where (space), or how (technology) the measurement was conducted. The approach is applicable to both in-process and end-product measurements and facilitates and supports understanding of manufacturing and measurement variability relative to acceptance criteria. Application of modern metrologic principles to measurement of food and drug articles expands opportunities to ensure availability of good quality food and drugs in national and international markets.