Maintenance and Enhancement of ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation

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Project Summary/Abstract The Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards (MFRPS) established a uniform foundation for management of state programs responsible for the regulation of manufactured food facilities, including laboratory analysis for chemical and microbiological contaminants. Based on the Georgia Department of Agriculture (GDA) 2011 Improvement Plan Report, needs were determined and a five-year FDA cooperative agreement was awarded to obtain accreditation. This new 2019 cooperative agreement is for an additional year in order to expand upon the maintenance and enhancement of our accreditation, providing the GDA’s primary servicing lab the necessary resources to adopt and implement international standards. Furthermore, the labs would be assessed or audited to these standard (ISO/IEC 17025) requirements by a third-party accrediting body. GDA laboratories recently achieved accreditation which assists their regulatory agencies in compliance requirements for contractual work on behalf of FDA. In order for GDA laboratories to maintain their accreditation, funding is now being requested through the ISO/IEC 17025 Accreditation Maintenance and Enhancement for State Food Testing Laboratories (Competition A) RFA to offset the added expense of required Quality Assurance activities as well as the ongoing upkeep of critical analytical equipment. For state partners to assume added responsibility for Global Food Safety initiatives, further enhancement and enrichment will be necessary for the primary servicing labs’ analytical capability to meet these goals. In part to achieve these goals, the laboratory will rely upon the established relationships with our regulatory agency and their agreement to collect and analyze samples under MFRPS. GDA has already developed and demonstrated successful relationships with their regulatory partners and ability to fulfill this objective. In addition, signed agreements have been forged to collect a minimum of 110 additional MFRP samples to be analyzed for contaminants. These results will be submitted in a national database repository and violative adulterations will be subject to appropriate regulatory action. If awarded, this cooperative agreement will allow GDA laboratories to maintain the current accreditation to ISO standards, as well as the ability to continue collecting and analyzing samples to support an integrated national food safety system.