Rhode Island State Food Testing Laboratories Maintenance and Enhancement of ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation

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Project Summary / Abstract for State of Rhode Island Maintenance and Enhancement of ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation and Whole Genome Sequencing for State Food Testing Laboratories Competition A Application Project Summary/Abstract The Rhode Island State Health Laboratories (SHL) is the state food regulatory laboratory accredited to the ISO/IEC 17025:2005 laboratory standards for the FDA Manufactured Food Regulatory Program (MFRPS) in support of the state and federal integrated food safety system under the Food Safety Modernization Act. The SHL seeks to enhance its food testing program and maintain its accreditation for both of its food microbiology and chemistry laboratories while transitioning to the updated ISO/IEC 17025:2017 laboratory standard. The SHL seeks to increase the number of samples collected and tested for the MFRPS program by utilizing its long standing partnership with the state’s food regulatory agency, the Center for Food Protection in the effort to improve the state’s sampling agreement for MFRPS. The SHL seeks to increase the laboratories’ capacity to provide standardized food testing for the FDA while it maintains conformance with Standard Ten of the MFRPS through training of its scientists and continually improving its systems. The SHL will communicate with regulatory laboratories in other states to gain insight into how they plan to sustain ISO 17025:2017 accreditation for food testing as it intends to achieve its own sustainability. The SHL intends to continue implementing the electronic formatting requirements as they evolve from FDA for eLEXNET. The SHL seeks to continue reporting all food sample test results to the FDA via the eLEXNET database. The SHL will continue its participation as a member of the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) and a FDA Microbiology Cooperative Agreement Program (MCAP) laboratory.