After the publication of high levels of acrylamide (AA) in food, many research activities started all over the world in order to determine the occurrence and the concentration of this substance in various types of food. As no validated methods were available at that time, interlaboratory studies on the determination of AA in food were of the highest priority. Under the boundary conditions of applying well-established evaluation schemes, the results of 2 studies conducted by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) in Germany and by the European Commission's Directorate General Joint Research Center (JRC) exhibited an overall acceptable performance of the participants in these studies. Nevertheless, many laboratories showed problems in determining AA in food with a complex matrix such as cocoa. The results of analysis also showed a broader variation of AA for samples with low AA concentrations and indicated a bias of the results obtained by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry without derivatization. Improvements of the performance of some laboratories appeared to be necessary.