As part of your total food safety management system, there are many verification activities that need to be completed. Some can be completed in-house but other verification activities require that you send food samples or environment samples to an external testing laboratory. In this article, I am going to go through the key things that your food business should consider when selecting a food testing laboratory.
Food Laboratory Certification or Accreditation
The very first consideration should be to find out if the food testing laboratory is accredited or certified to ISO/IEC 17025:2017. ISO/IEC 17025:2017 specifies the general requirements for the competence to carry out tests and/or calibrations, including sampling. It covers testing and calibration performed using standard methods, non-standard methods, and laboratory-developed methods.
Scope of Accreditation
There are many tests that can be performed on both finished food products, raw materials, water and your production environment. The most common testing includes microbiological and chemical analysis. Whichever testing that you require, make sure that your selected food testing laboratory is suitably scoped to undertake that testing. As part of their ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, they will be able to provide evidence as to their scope.
Technical proficiency testing
Like any type of activity there is always the risk that different people will do things different ways. This is the same for lab technicians. One good practice for laboratories is to have their staff participate in proficiency testing or round robin testing. This is a check carried out to find out analytical variance or differences in test results obtained by different analysts who work in the same organization, at different branches, or at different locations.
Sub-contracting Services
Make sure that you are aware if your chosen food testing laboratory sub-contracts another laboratory to undertake any testing. Your selected laboratory may sub-contract to another food testing laboratory due to not having the required testing scope, expertise or time. If you find that they do sub-contract, make sure that this laboratory also has the correct accreditation as discussed above.
Allowable Limits and Detection
Before you request any testing you need to be fully aware of what the required allowable limits are for your specified verification activity. For example, what is the allowable limit of Salmonella in a baked bread product? You can refer to your external certification standard, customer specification and food laws in your country of manufacture to see what these are. Note: Keep in mind that if you are exporting your food product, the allowable limits maybe different from that regulated within your own country. When you have this information, you can then find out from your selected food testing laboratory, what their limits of detection are.
Turn-around time
The time required to test your sample may be a consideration in your food or environmental testing. Check with the laboratory what their turn-around time is for testing. I would also suggest checking what the best time/day to send samples is. It may be that the laboratory does not work on the weekends therefore sending samples on a Friday afternoon for analysis may not be suitable. Another consideration is when you are using external testing as part of a ‘positive release’ procedure. This means that the product needs to be tested as suitable before it can be released into the marketplace or to your customer. Time can be a critical factory when it comes to positive release.
Testing Reports
Any testing that is performed should be evidenced by a suitable analysis report from the food testing laboratory. Make sure that all information is included on the report including date of testing and sampling, product details (use-by, batch codes, testing location, product name), testing completed with results, limits of detection, laboratory test methods used, accreditation details of lab performing the analysis. All testing reports should be reviewed by your food business to ensure compliance to your testing protocol.
Interpreting test results and reports
A lot of people struggle with the interpretation of their results and I have seen this many times during an audit. First and foremost, if you don’t understand the reported results – ask the testing laboratory to explain. It is pointless activity having a skilled and efficient testing regime if there is no ability to convert results into useful information. Our article on understanding food sampling analysis certificates can get you started.
Sampling and Testing Budget
Undertaking any external testing can end you being an expensive process so ensure that your food business has adequately budgeted for all required verification activities. I suggest that you get a quote from different food testing laboratories so you can adequately budget.
Your audit evidence
To make your external audit process a little less stressful, I have included this list of evidence that you should have on file regarding your external food testing laboratory:
- Approved Supplier – ensure they are included within your approved supplier program as a service provider.
- A copy of the food testing laboratory accreditation certificate that has not expired.
- A copy of the testing methods that the laboratory is accredited to perform.
- A sampling plan – this is a plan or schedule of what testing will be undertaken and when it will be completed.
- Test Reports – All test reports provided by your selected food testing laboratory should be kept to verify your external testing activities.
- Trending reports – your third-party certification standard may require trending of testing results to be performed
I hope this has helped you out or provided a refresher. There are many other questions that you can ask although I have covered to main ones in this post. If you need guidance on what testing you should perform please refer to your certification standard and food regulatory requirements. If you are trying to establish the expiry date of your product you can check out my guide by clicking here.
