The South African National Accreditation System (SANAS), has granted accreditation to 11 microbiological and four chemical laboratory methods of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Food Research Institute (FRI).

SANAS is a member of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and the accreditation makes FRI the first food testing laboratories in the West Africa Sub-region to be accredited.

FRI is also now linked to the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) and International Electro-Technical Commission (IEC) standards.

The certification started from May 2007 and would expire in 2012 if FRI did not work hard to maintain the standard.

ISO 17025 is an international standard, which defines the requirements that a testing or calibration laboratory has to fulfil to show that it is technically competent and operates an efficient management system to ensure that it produces analytical results that should be accepted globally.

Professor Emmanuel Owusu-Bennoah, Director-General of CSIR, who announced this at a press conference in Accra, said to obtain accreditation to ISO 17025, a laboratory had to implement a quality management system, which dealt with the management and the technical operations of the laboratory.

"The laboratory then applies to the accreditation body, which assesses all documentations and procedures with respect to the quality management system and also carries out an on-site assessment of all technical operations including a rigorous assessment of the individual technical staff that carries out the analysis in the laboratory.

Prof. Owusu-Bennoah said the Danish government through DANIDA funded activities of the FRI, which enabled it to achieve accreditation to ISO 17025, and was grateful for the support over the years.

The 11 microbiological methods were Enumeration of yeast and moulds, enumeration of presumptive Escherichia coli, detection of Salmonella, Coliform bacteria detection in foods, determination of Bacillus cereus in foods, determination of aerobic micro-organisms and detection of thermo-tolerant coliform bacteria in foods after pre-incubation among a number of tests.

Prof. Owusu-Bennoah said some of the key provisions in the Act of Parliament (Act 521), which re-established the Council in 1996 catered for such matters as private sector concerns and commercialisation of research.

He said that marked a radical departure from the principles that characterize CSIR originally and owing to the refocusing of the scope of operations and activities, it had become overwhelmingly imperative for the CSIR to offer needed services to the business and the industrial sector more directly so as to play a more effective role in national development.

The Director-General, therefore, called on exporters and importers, food regulatory agencies and all relevant stakeholders in the food industry to avail themselves of facilities at the FRI to make for a better food control system in the country.

Dr William A. Plahar, Director, CSIR/FRI, said the major achievements of the CSIR/FRI over the years were recognised in terms of the significant contribution to the development of Trade and Industry, Agricultural, Health and Educational sectors of the national economy.

He said, in addition to technology development and transfer for enhanced national food and nutrition security and poverty reduction, the institute renders technical and analytical services to several local food industries on regular basis.

Prof. Edward S. Ayensu, Chairman of CSIR Council, said it was a petty that simple recipe such as fruit juice, which could be easily prepared in Ghana were being imported into the country.

"Now that you got the accreditation, it was my hope that you would move forward and encourage the entrepreneurs to produce some of the food recipes for the consumption of the local people," he said.

ISO 17025 is produced jointly by ISO and the IEC and deals specifically with testing and calibration laboratories to ensure that they operate at a level, which provides assurance of the quality of service produced by the laboratories.


Source: GNA