Rhode Island State Food Testing Laboratories Maintenance and Enhancement of Iso/iec 17025 Accreditation

The Rhode Island State Health Laboratories (SHL) is the state food regulatory laboratoryaccredited to the ISO/IEC 17025:2005 laboratory standards for the FDA ManufacturedFood Regulatory Program (MFRPS) in support of the state and federal integrated foodsafety system under the Food Safety Modernization Act. The SHL seeks to enhance itsfood testing program and maintain its accreditation for both of its food microbiology andchemistry laboratories while transitioning to the updated ISO/IEC 17025:2017 laboratorystandard. The SHL seeks to increase the number of samples collected and tested for theMFRPS program by utilizing its long standing partnership with the state?s foodregulatory agency, the Center for Food Protection in the effort to improve the state?ssampling agreement for MFRPS. The SHL seeks to increase the laboratories? capacity toprovide standardized food testing for the FDA while it maintains conformance withStandard Ten of the MFRPS through training of its scientists and continually improvingits systems. The SHL will communicate with regulatory laboratories in other states togain insight into how they plan to sustain ISO 17025:2017 accreditation for food testingas it intends to achieve its own sustainability. The SHL intends to continue implementingthe electronic formatting requirements as they evolve from FDA for eLEXNET. The SHLseeks to continue reporting all food sample test results to the FDA via the eLEXNETdatabase. The SHL will continue its participation as a member of the Food EmergencyResponse Network (FERN) and a FDA Microbiology Cooperative Agreement Program(MCAP) laboratory.