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

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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 Laboratories RFA-FD-19-018 SF424: Other Project Information Project Summary: The Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services (DCLS) is the public health laboratory for the Commonwealth of Virginia and offers a wide variety of laboratory testing services for state and federal agencies, local governments and other states in support of public health, environmental protection and emergency response. DCLS provides surveillance and emergency response testing of food samples for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Food Safety Program by offering nearly comprehensive testing of food samples by microbiology, chemistry and radiochemical methods. DCLS obtained ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation in January 2017 for five food testing methods (three microbiology and two chemistry methods), expanded this scope of accreditation to include three additional methods in 2018, and proposes to maintain and further expand this accreditation scope to include up to three new test methods during the budget period. DCLS’ long term goal is to integrate ISO/IEC standards for all methodologies for food safety testing required by the VDACS manufactured food regulatory program. DCLS proposes to analyze manufactured food surveillance samples by ISO/IEC scope methods as a continuation of the sampling agreement currently established with the VDACS Food Safety Program for which high risk samples are targeted from retail and manufacturing establishments. DCLS is a long-term participating partner in the FDA CFSAN GenomeTrakr program and proposes to further enhance the GenomeTrakr Network pathogen databases by generating and sharing genome sequences of more than 400 pathogen isolates from food, environmental and animal sources during the budget period. The genomic information made available through the GenomeTrakr Network can identify food products potentially associated with an outbreak, assist with traceback of contaminated food ingredients, compliance monitoring of sites with previous pathogen contamination issues and can improve the understanding of pathogen virulence and pathogenicity atttributes.