🥟 Chemical testing of ready-to-eat delicatessen products according to PN-A-82100 — standard withdrawn, still in the scopes

Food chemistry PN-A-82100

Overview

STATUS (state of the PKN card on 22.09.2026). PN-A-82100:1985 — publication 12-09-1985, 14 pages, ICS 67.050, it replaced PN-A-82100:1971. The card has the note "Withdrawn" with the date 27-07-2015 and HAS NO "Replaced by" row. The standard has therefore been withdrawn for more than eleven years, and no document replacing it has been indicated.

THE CHAIN OF EDITIONS — AND THREE DIFFERENT SUBJECTS UNDER THE SAME NUMBER. This number had three editions and changed its scope in the meantime: • PN-A-82100:1953 — "determination of water content in MEAT", ICS 67.120.10, withdrawn 01-01-1957; • PN-A-82100:1971 — "chemical testing of READY-TO-EAT DELICATESSEN PRODUCTS", ICS 67.050, withdrawn 01-04-1986, replaced by the 1985 edition; • PN-A-82100:1985 — the last edition, withdrawn 27-07-2015 WITHOUT a successor. The first edition thus concerned a different test object from the two subsequent ones. Anyone who comes across the card of the 1971 edition will read "withdrawn and replaced by PN-A-82100:1985" and may get the impression that the method has an active document — whereas the indicated successor has itself been withdrawn since 2015.

ONE STANDARD, A DOZEN OR SO METHODS — HENCE CITATIONS BY CLAUSE. The scope of the 1985 edition covers methods for the chemical testing of delicatessen semi-finished and finished products: determination of the content of water, fat, total protein, sugars, starch, sodium chloride, mineral impurities, total acidity, nitrites and nitrates, creatine and creatinine, total extract, the acidity of the extracted fat, the peroxide value, and the detection of aldehydes; the preparation of the laboratory sample is described separately. Each method has in the standard its own principle, apparatus, reagents, procedure and calculation formula. That is why in accreditation scopes the standard almost never corresponds to a single methodology: a dozen or so separate determinations are hidden under one number, and a laboratory accredits those that it carries out. MEASUREMENT (22.09.2026): out of 64 scope entries, 33 entries at 10 laboratories indicate A SPECIFIC CLAUSE of the standard. The most frequent: clause 2.5 (7 entries), clause 2.3.2 (6), clause 2.6 (4), clauses 2.4 and 2.7 (3 each), clauses 2.2 and 2.2.1 (2 each), and also 2.2.4, 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.13 and 2.14 (one each). WHICH CLAUSE CORRESPONDS TO WHICH METHOD — READ FROM THE NEIGHBOURING COLUMN, NOT FROM THE TEXT OF THE STANDARD (22.09.2026: "the answer stands in a place where one does not look"). We still do not have the text of the standard, and the PKN card gives only an overall scope without numbering — but each of these 33 entries has in the same row a methodology and a technique, and these form a consistent map. THE NUMBER 33/10 HAS ITS PATTERN NEXT TO IT, because without it a different number comes out: a clause is written both as "pkt 2.5" and as "p. 2.5", and matching on "pkt" alone gives 29 entries at 8 laboratories and loses along the way the only citation of clause 2.3 with the extraction-gravimetric technique. The map below was produced after matching both forms: • clauses 2.2 and 2.2.1 — water content, gravimetric method (2 entries each); • clause 2.2.4 — dry matter content CALCULATED, without a technique (1); • clause 2.3 — fat content, volumetric (Gerber) or extraction-gravimetric method (2); • clause 2.3.1 — fat content, butyrometric method (Gerber) (1); • clause 2.3.2 — TOTAL fat content after hydrolysis, extraction-gravimetric method (Weibull-Stoldt) (6); • clause 2.4 — nitrogen content, titrimetric method (Kjeldahl) (3); • clause 2.5 — total sugar content after inversion, titrimetric method (Luff-Schoorl) (7); • clause 2.6 — starch content, titrimetric method (Luff-Schoorl) (4); • clause 2.7 — content of table salt / sodium chloride, titrimetric method (Mohr) (3); • clause 2.13 — acid value of the extracted fat, titrimetric method (1); • clause 2.14 — peroxide value of the extracted fat, titrimetric method (1). WHAT THIS READING MEANS AND WHAT IT DOES NOT MEAN. Ten laboratories indicated these clauses independently of each other, and NO CLAUSE RECEIVED TWO DIFFERENT QUANTITIES — for 2.3 and 2.3.2 the names of the techniques differ, but the quantity measured is the same (fat), and the division into fat determined directly and total fat after hydrolysis agrees with the fact that the standard has separate subclauses for them. It is therefore a CROSS-CONFIRMATION of ten independent declarations, not a reading of the text of the standard: the map says what laboratories accredit under a given clause, and does not settle whether under this number the standard also contains something that nobody accredits.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE READER OF A SCOPE. The citation "PN-A-82100:1985" without a clause number does not say which of the dozen or so methods the laboratory has accredited — and there are 31 such citations out of 64. To establish this, one has to read the methodology column: in our measurement, next to this standard there are, among others, starch content (10 entries), water content (7), nitrogen content (6), sodium chloride content (6), fat content (5), sugars in three different wordings (9 altogether), ash in two (3), acidity, the acid value and peroxide value of the extracted fat, protein and dry matter calculated. It is the same standard in each of these rows.

A WITHDRAWN STANDARD THAT IS APPLIED — AND THIS IS NOT THE LABORATORIES' MISTAKE. Withdrawal of a standard by PKN does not prohibit its use: standardisation support and updating disappear, but the method does not stop being a method. In accreditation, the laboratory demonstrates the fitness of the method for purpose, not the mere fact that the standard is on the active list. With this particular standard the situation is special, because THERE IS NO SUCCESSOR — there is no document to which the laboratory could move, and no newer edition of these methods. THIS STANDARD WAS MANDATORY BY VIRTUE OF A REGULATION — FOR THREE AND A HALF YEARS. Polish Standards used to be mandatory: the obligation to apply them to food was introduced by the regulation of the Minister of Agriculture and Food Economy of 18 March 1994 (Journal of Laws 1994 No. 40 item 152), and in its annex "Wykaz polskich norm do obowiązkowego stosowania" [List of Polish standards for mandatory application], in section 12 "Produkty spożywcze" [food products], under item 66 it says: "PN-85/A-82100 Wyroby garmażeryjne. Metody badań chemicznych" [Ready-to-eat delicatessen products. Methods of chemical testing]. This is exactly this standard, in the same 1985 edition that laboratories cite to this day. The obligation lasted from 25-03-1994 (entry into force) to 24-09-1997, when the act was repealed by the regulation of 27 June 1997 (Journal of Laws 1997 No. 83 item 535) — and IN THIS SECOND ACT PN-A-82100 IS NO LONGER THERE. From the delicatessen family, the new list names only PRODUCT standards: PN-A-82001 to PN-A-82013, PN-A-82201 and PN-A-82300. WE CHECKED ALL VERSIONS OF BOTH ACTS, NOT ONLY THE ORIGINAL ONES — because the copy one opens is sometimes incomplete, and the sentence "the act does not name the standard" read from an incomplete copy is a sentence about nothing (22.09.2026). The register knows of NO consolidated-text entry for either of these two acts — neither "Inf. o tekście jednolitym" [information on the consolidated text] nor "akt posiada tekst jednolity" [the act has a consolidated text]; consolidated texts were simply never produced here. We also checked both copies for completeness: the 1994 act has 12 pages and all were read, the 1997 act — 7 pages, also in full; the gaps in the numbering of the list items result from the TWO-COLUMN layout and from the fact that each section has its own numbering, not from missing pages. We also checked all NINE amendments of both acts (Journal of Laws 1995 item 3, 1995 item 611, 1996 item 322 to the 1994 act; Journal of Laws 1998 item 901, 1999 item 989, 2000 item 1225, 2001 item 1044, 2001 item 1185, 2002 item 1132 to the 1997 act): none adds or deletes item 66, and in none does the number 82100 appear — altogether 32 citations of the A-82xxx family, all of other numbers. The 1997 regulation was deemed repealed as of 01-01-2003, when the Act on standardisation abolished the obligation to apply Polish Standards altogether. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR TODAY'S SCOPE: today citing this standard is the laboratory's decision, not the implementation of a regulation — but it is not a standard that the legislator never considered suitable for testing food. It recognised it and listed it by name; then it removed it from the list, leaving only product standards there.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO LISTS IS ITSELF CONTENT. The 1994 act imposed the obligation both on PRODUCT standards and on standards of TEST METHODS: next to PN-85/A-82100 it contains PN-73/A-82112 "Mięso i przetwory mięsne. Oznaczanie zawartości soli kuchennej" [Meat and meat products. Determination of table salt content], PN-74/A-82114 (nitrites and nitrates) and PN-89/A-82115 (ash); the word "Oznaczanie" [determination] occurs in it 93 times. The 1997 act uses it nine times and not once with the A-82xxx family. WHERE THESE NINE STAND — CORRECTED ON 22.09.2026, because the first version attributed them to the wrong family of standards. All nine ("Oznaczanie zawartości przyswajalnego cynku, miedzi, boru, manganu, magnezu, żelaza, potasu, fosforu" [determination of the content of available zinc, copper, boron, manganese, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorus] and "Oznaczanie powietrznie suchej i suchej masy" [determination of air-dry and dry matter]) belong to the PN-R-040xx SERIES "Analiza chemiczno-rolnicza gleby i roślin" [chemical and agricultural analysis of soil and plants]: PN-92/R-04016, PN-92/R-04017, PN-93/R-04018, PN-93/R-04019, PN-R-04020:1994 and neighbouring ones — the act names eleven items from this series. WE ALSO CHECKED THE READING OF ITEM 66 AGAINST THE COLUMN LAYOUT, NOT ONLY AGAINST THE CONTENT — because with a two-column act the quotation alone does not prove to which column the number belongs (22.09.2026). In the right-hand column of that page the numbering runs without gaps: 64 (PN-87/A-82060, phosphorus in meat), 65 (PN-88/A-82062, sensory testing of meat products), 66 (PN-85/A-82100, our standard), 67 (PN-92/A-82102, sampling of delicatessen products), 68 (PN-71/A-82105, cured meats). Five consecutive numbers, all from the A-820xx and A-821xx family, each with its title in the same row as the number. At this point the left-hand column runs with its own numbering (36, 37, 38, 39, 40) and concerns eggs and poultry. Assigning item 66 to PN-85/A-82100 is therefore not a reading of proximity, but a reading of one column. THE CAUSE OF THE ERROR IS THE SAME AS WITH PN-A-82100 ITSELF, ONLY REVERSED: the act is set in TWO COLUMNS, and conversion to text places a row from the left-hand column next to a row from the right-hand one. In the text stream "149. PN-86/A-99005 Wyroby tytoniowe. Papierosy." [Tobacco products. Cigarettes.] stands in the same line as "Oznaczanie zawartości przyswajalnego cynku." [determination of the content of available zinc] — and we took proximity in the conversion for belonging in the document. ACTION: with an act set in columns, the number and title of a standard are read from ONE ROW OF THE ORIGINAL, not from proximity after conversion. AND THE THING THAT FOLLOWS FROM THIS CORRECTION IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE ERROR: the 1997 legislator imposed the obligation of application on nine standards of the PN-R-040xx SERIES — i.e. the same series to which PN-R-04024 belongs — a standard described in a separate entry of this database, on available phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and manganese in organic soil. PN-R-04024 itself does NOT APPEAR in this act (checked: the string "04024" does not occur in it even once), and in the 1994 act the only hit for this string is PN-75/A-04024 "Produkty żywnościowe. Wykrywanie i ilościowe oznaczanie gronkowców chorobotwórczych" [Food products. Detection and enumeration of pathogenic staphylococci] — a different standard with a similar number. Today this whole family lives in the accreditation scopes without any obligation: the PN-R-040xx series has 251 entries at 54 laboratories, and PN-R-04024 alone — 59 entries at 22 laboratories (measurement of 22.09.2026). So, for delicatessen products, the 1997 legislator left the requirements for the PRODUCT on the list and removed the test methods from it. We do not know the reason and do not guess it — but the direction of the change itself is visible in both texts.

FOR ONE DAY THIS ENTRY CONTAINED EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE SENTENCE — AND IT IS WORTH KNOWING HOW IT AROSE. The first version said: "PN-A-82100 is not in either of the two acts", and next to it stood a supporting sentence: "we checked the variants of the notation and none is there". The 1994 act lies in the register as a SCAN put through OCR, and this can be seen throughout the text ("spoż?wcze", "Przetwo'ry", "PN -80/ A-04014"). OCR split the number with a SPACE INSIDE THE DIGITS: the text reads "PN -851 A-821 00", not "PN-85/A-82100". None of the variants we checked at the time ("8210", "82 100") catches such a notation. It was found only by a question put differently: instead of searching for OUR number, we listed ALL strings beginning with "A-82" in both acts and in the nine amendments, and then read this list — 23 numbers in the 1994 act, 18 in the 1997 act, 32 in the amendments. The lesson is more general than this entry: with an OCR text, a NEGATIVE result of a search by number is not proof — proof is only a read list of everything that stands in the given place at all. The 1997 act is a digital text, and there the negative result holds.

What we did not check: we did not search the whole body of regulations in force, only these two acts on the obligation to apply PN together with their nine amendments — today all no longer in force, because the 2002 Act on standardisation abolished the obligation to apply Polish Standards. Nor did we check clients' requirements or sector regulations outside the register.

THREE FORMS OF NOTATION OF ONE DESIGNATION. In the scopes the same standard appears as: • "PN-A-82100:1985" — 44 entries (the form from the PKN card), • "PN-85/A-82100" — 15 entries (the old notation scheme: the year before the series letter), • "PN-A-82100" without a year — 5 entries. A search by one of these forms will find at most two thirds of the citations. The old scheme "PN-85/A-…" is not an error — this is how standards were written at the time this one was created — but both forms can stand in one accreditation scope at once.

SCALE. 64 entries at 13 laboratories. Matching by the BEGINNING of the notation gives 49 entries at 7 laboratories — the "Laboratories" tab shows this smaller number, because in some scopes the standard stands in a joint citation after another one (e.g. after PN-A-04018 for nitrogen or after PN-74/A-86746). The test object is most often "Wyroby garmażeryjne" [ready-to-eat delicatessen products] (24 entries), followed by "Mięso i przetwory mięsne" [meat and meat products] (9), "Wyroby garmażeryjne, wyroby gotowe" [delicatessen products, finished products] (6), fish and fish products, and in two scopes — a long list of matrices that also includes milk, cereals, confectionery and food supplements. The methods of this standard are thus sometimes applied to matrices that its title does not name.

Method principle

The standard gathers in one document classical food chemistry methods applied to ready-to-eat delicatessen products: drying and weighing (water content, dry matter), fat extraction, Kjeldahl digestion with conversion of nitrogen to protein, titration (sodium chloride, total acidity, acid value and peroxide value of the fat), determination of sugars after inversion and of starch, and ashing (total ash and ash insoluble in hydrochloric acid). Each of these methods is a separate clause in the standard with its own apparatus, reagents and calculation formula — which is why citing the standard without a clause number does not indicate the method.

Applications

• Testing of ready-to-eat delicatessen products and semi-finished products — water, fat, protein, starch, salt, sugars
• Testing of meat and meat products and of fish and fish products with the same methods
• Assessment of the freshness of the fat in the product — acid value and peroxide value of the extracted fat
• Checking compliance of the composition with the manufacturer's declaration and with the recipe
• Reading an accreditation scope in which a dozen or so different methodologies stand next to one standard

Key parameters

Standard

Standard number

PN-A-82100:1985 (PN-85/A-82100)

Title (PL)

Wyroby garmażeryjne — Badania chemiczne

Title (EN)

(brak wersji obcojęzycznej — norma wyłącznie polska)

Step-by-step procedure

1. Establishing WHICH method is needed

   The standard is a collection of a dozen or so determinations. The order and the report must indicate the clause of the standard or the name of the determination — "according to PN-A-82100" alone does not specify the method.

2. Checking whether the laboratory has this clause in its scope

   In the accreditation scopes, 33 entries indicate a specific clause and 31 do not. With a citation without a clause, one has to read the methodology column to establish whether the accreditation covers the required determination.

3. Preparing the laboratory sample

   The standard describes the preparation of the sample separately, before the methods of determination — a delicatessen product is heterogeneous, so the way of comminution and homogenisation affects every subsequent result.

4. Carrying out the determination according to the appropriate clause

   Each clause gives the principle, apparatus, reagents, procedure and calculation formula. Results from different clauses are not interchangeable, even if they concern related quantities (e.g. total ash and ash insoluble in HCl).

5. Recording the citation in the report

   The citation in the report should have the same form as in the accreditation scope, with the clause number if the scope contains it. With this standard, three forms of notation of the same designation are in circulation — mixing them in one document makes it harder to check conformity with the scope.

6. Noting the status of the standard

   The standard has been withdrawn since 27-07-2015 and has no successor. If the recipient of the result requires a method from an active document, this must be settled before the test — after the result it cannot be remedied other than by repeating the test with a different method.

Required equipment and apparatus

Reagents, media and consumables

Health and safety (OHS)

• The citation "PN-A-82100:1985" without a clause number does not indicate the method — a dozen or so different determinations stand under one number
• The card of the 1971 edition indicates a successor that has itself been withdrawn — checking the status on the wrong edition gives a false impression that the method has an active document
• The standard has been withdrawn since 2015 and HAS NO successor: there is no newer edition of these methods to which one could move
• The same standard appears in the scopes in three forms of notation — a search by one of them misses some of the citations
• The methods are sometimes applied to matrices outside the title of the standard (milk, cereals, food supplements) — the laboratory must demonstrate fitness for such a matrix itself
• The first edition of this number (1953) concerned the water content of meat, not delicatessen products — the number without a year does not determine the subject of the standard

Frequently asked questions