Bio-Rad quality control testing laboratory for food and water safety receives ISO 17025 accreditation

Bio-Rad Laboratories has announced that its food and water safety quality control laboratory in Steenvoorde, France, has obtained ISO 17025 accreditation following an audit of the lab’s quality management system by the French Accreditation Committee (Cofrac).

ISO 17025 accreditation recognizes that the controls used in batch release for water and food microbiology testing performed in the laboratory are uniform, so downstream laboratories can reduce their testing and controls and still ensure food and water safety. If a laboratory is not accredited, the downstream lab must strictly monitor its products and services to ensure they are performing as anticipated.

“Testing requirements for food and water continue to increase, so it is critical that we deliver products under accreditation to our customers so they can have confidence in our product quality,” said Jean-Michel Plancq, Quality Manager, Bio-Rad. “We are pleased that we met the requirements during [our] initial accreditation audit with little deviation from our normal protocols.”

The accreditation process uses the internationally accepted ISO 17025:2017 standard for testing and calibration laboratories. Certificates of analysis that report the quality of products are accepted anywhere without the need for further testing. As a result, the standard can streamline cooperation among manufacturers, regulatory entities, and accreditation organizations to offer customers confidence that the manufacturer provides conformity in testing via the validation of their controls by independent experts.

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