Alaska State Environmental Health Laboratory Maintaining and Enhancing ISO 17025 Accreditation for Food Testing

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ASEHL Project Summary-SFY20 By maintaining ISO/IEC 17025 for food testing, ASEHL will continue to deliver both scientifically valid and legally defensible data to its clients. The clients, including the Alaska Food Safety and Sanitation Program and U.S. FDA, will benefit by receiving enhanced customer service, consistent turnaround times, and little to no down time. Accreditation puts ASEHL into compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. This compliance facilitates FSS, our sister agency, in remaining compliant with MFRPS and getting FDA inspection contracts. The following are for consideration to enhance our ISO scope: “Big 6” E. coli, Bacillus cereus, Shigella, enterotoxin, and Domoic acid further support our manufactured food testing program beyond pathogen surveillance to better support the food regulatory program and manufactured food producers. ASEHL has had QC programs which produced scientifically valid data for many years. However, only the analysts themselves were knowledgeable of the requirements and whether ASEHL was meeting them. ISO accreditation brings all operations, from top management down and from other State divisions, together in a single direction: improvement toward total quality management. These fundamental, cultural changes, while challenging, are essential to ASEHL’s ability to continue its service to the State of Alaska.