The industry for food testing was very different only five years ago. While in 2008 there were merely five food testing laboratories in the United States that had acquired laboratory accreditation, that number has multiplied today and is now in the dozens. Could this be the result of the United States' expansion of imported food? Could it be a cultural craze, something sort of like the current obsession with organic foods and GMOs? It's probably some combination of various reasons, but the important thing is that we as a nation are beginning to prioritize food testing and its credibility, which is beneficial for everyone.
In order for a food lab to be accredited, it has to pass a survey conducted by a third party organization. The surveyor will inspect the laboratory to ensure that it is using the industry's best testing equipment and employing the most accurate and efficient methods, while also confirming that the lab employees are knowledgeable and able to perform those tests correctly. It's essentially a gauge of a lab's aptitude in its industry, which helps to indicate that the lab's acquired results are accurate, effective, and universally accepted.
Universally accepted is the key term in this situation, especially since shoppers no longer know just where food is coming from. We import from all over the globe, so a global lab accreditation standard helps to ensure that what's acceptable in another country meets our standards for sanitization, nutritional value, and chemical content as well.
Not only does this provide a certain peace of mind for consumers - as aforementioned, there's a current craze about GMOs and their health effects - it opens up the possibilities for the global food industries. It creates a universally understood language to encourage communication between labs in various countries, as well as their clients, about the best tests to use and the best performance practices. It's a chain of practices that, in the end, benefits the consumer.
Though we're still in the early stages of mainstreaming the accreditation process, the demand for food testing labs to be accredited is most certainly on the rise. The interest in receiving this accreditation surged when the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or the USDA, and the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, both became accredited laboratories and were greatly commended for it by the government. There's clearly a need for a way to confirm that the results of a food test are credible, and this is the perfect way to provide that credibility. It demonstrates that a laboratory takes their position in the food industry seriously and wishes to provide accurate results.
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