Maintenance and Enhancement of ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation and Whole Genome Sequencing for State Food Testing Laboratories

Commonwealth of Virginia Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS)Maintenance and Enhancement of ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation and Whole Genome Sequencing for State Food Testing LaboratoriesRFA-FD-19-018SF424: Other Project InformationProject Summary:The Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS) is the public health laboratoryfor the Commonwealth of Virginia and offers a wide variety of laboratory testing servicesfor state and federal agencies, local governments and other states in support of publichealth, environmental protection and emergency response. DCLS provides surveillanceand emergency response testing of food samples for the Virginia Department ofAgriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Food Safety Program by offering nearlycomprehensive testing of food samples by microbiology, chemistry and radiochemicalmethods. DCLS obtained ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation in January 2017 for five foodtesting methods (three microbiology and two chemistry methods), expanded this scopeof accreditation to include three additional methods in 2018, and proposes to maintainand further expand this accreditation scope to include up to three new test methodsduring the budget period. DCLS? long term goal is to integrate ISO/IEC standards for allmethodologies for food safety testing required by the VDACS manufactured foodregulatory program. DCLS proposes to analyze manufactured food surveillancesamples by ISO/IEC scope methods as a continuation of the sampling agreementcurrently established with the VDACS Food Safety Program for which high risk samplesare targeted from retail and manufacturing establishments. DCLS is a long-termparticipating partner in the FDA CFSAN GenomeTrakr program and proposes to furtherenhance the GenomeTrakr Network pathogen databases by generating and sharinggenome sequences of more than 400 pathogen isolates from food, environmental andanimal sources during the budget period. The genomic information made availablethrough the GenomeTrakr Network can identify food products potentially associatedwith an outbreak, assist with traceback of contaminated food ingredients, compliancemonitoring of sites with previous pathogen contamination issues and can improve theunderstanding of pathogen virulence and pathogenicity atttributes.