Iso/iec 17025 Accredition Maintenance and Enhancement For State Food Testing Laboratories

Project Summary / Abstract The Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards (MFRPS) established a uniformfoundation for management of state programs responsible for the regulation of manufacturedfood facilities, including laboratory analysis for chemical and microbiological contaminants.Based on the Georgia Department of Agriculture?s (GDA) 2011 Improvement Plan Report,needs were determined and a cooperative agreement was awarded by FDA. This agreement(Laboratory Support Improvement Plan) was to provide the regulatory agency?s primaryservicing lab the necessary resources to adopt and implement international standards.Furthermore, the labs would be assessed or audited to these standard (ISO/IEC 17025:2005)requirements by a third-party accrediting body. GDA laboratories recently achievedaccreditation which assists their regulatory agencies in compliance requirements for contractualwork on behalf of FDA. In order for GDA laboratories to maintain their accreditation, we are requesting fundingin the form of a cooperative agreement entitled, ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation Maintenance andEnhancement for State Food Testing Laboratories (Competition A), to offset the added expenseof required Quality Assurance activities as well as the ongoing upkeep of critical analyticalequipment. For state partners to assume added responsibility for Global Food Safety initiatives,further enhancement and enrichment will be necessary for the primary servicing labs? analyticalcapability to meet these goals. In part to achieve these goals the laboratory will rely upon theestablished relationships with our regulatory agency and their agreement to collect and analyzesamples under MFRPS. GDA has already developed and demonstrated successfulrelationships with their regulatory partners and ability to fulfill this objective. In addition, signedagreements have been forged to collect a minimum of 100 additional MFRPS samples andanalyzed for contaminants. These results will be submitted in a national database repositoryand violative adulterations will be subject to appropriate regulatory action. This cooperativeagreement will allow GDA laboratories to maintain the current accreditation to ISO standards, aswell as the ability to continue collecting and analyzing samples to support an integrated nationalfood safety system.