Abstract: In the field of food safety inspection, researchers should fully consider the impact of measurement uncertainty to ensure the accuracy of the results. This article reviews the progress in research on measurement uncertainty in the past five years, and summarizes the definition, classification and evaluation procedures of measurement uncertainty. Moreover, this article systematically describes measurement uncertainty in food inspection and detection with respect to the sources, the major factors influencing it, and the methods for its evaluation, and it outlines the application of measurement uncertainty in practice. We expect that this review will provide a reference for the exploration of measurement uncertainty in food inspection.

Key words: food inspection; sources of uncertainty; uncertainty evaluation; uncertainty application