RQA - Recall News

May 2009

This month we are reviewing test laboratories - they are critical to your business but they must provide you with quality results. 

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Laboratory Selection - Urgent Testing

There are 95 labs accredited by UKAS in the UK and around 200 accredited by COFRAC in France to test for salmonella. So if you need to do an urgent salmonella test in a location 700 miles from your routine testing lab and time is slipping away what do you do?

Either:

1. Courier the sample to your usual lab or…
2. Have the sample sent "down the road" to a local lab accredited for salmonella.

All you need to do is make sure you know how to find that local lab when it is urgent. You can do this by doing a search on the national accreditation agency web site.

Of course for other more sophisticated tests, there may only be a few labs that are accredited and distance and time will not affect the product under test. In these cases it is worth pre-identifying one or two back up labs in case your main lab is unavailable or in case you need a second opinion.

Product Recall Tip – Making sure the lab is correct!

Nobody wants to initiate a product recall on the basis of suspect or inaccurate testing results.  If you get a result from your laboratory that suggests a problem with your product it only takes a few minutes to check with the lab to ensure that the result is reliable. But what should you ask? This will vary depending on the type of test, but here are a few suggestions:

1. Did the lab run standard control samples with known levels / limits at the same time as running the test on our sample(s)?
2. Did the standard control samples provide the expected correct result?
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Laboratory Accreditation & Collaborative Trials

All manufacturers and producers of food and consumer products need their products to be tested to demonstrate compliance with relevant safety and quality regulations and requirements. Where possible the lab should be accredited for the specific test that you are interested in. The international standard is ISO 17025:2005 – “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories”.

In addition, to accreditation, when selecting a lab, we would recommend that you ask if the lab participates in inter-laboratory collaborative trials to demonstrate their capability, accuracy and precision in the specific test(s) and products/materials you are interested.  You can also ask how they have performed in recent collaborative trials.  There are several major collaborative trials e.g. FAPAS.

RQA Out and About

RQA personnel are speaking at meetings in Hungary, Israel and the UK in the next few weeks. We are regularly invited to speak at conferences, seminars and, as product recall consultants to AIG, we often speak at product recall insurance meetings hosted by insurance brokers or AIG themselves. If you would like to have a RQA recall specialist at your seminar, please let us know.

Case Studies