SBS commemorates World Accreditation Day (June 9, 2020) |09 June 2020
The role of accreditation in improving food safety
June 9 marks World Accreditation Day, a global initiative jointly established by the International Accreditation Laboratory Accreditation (ILAC) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) to promote the value of accreditation. ‘Accreditation: Improving food safety’is the theme for 2020 World Accreditation Day. The theme highlights the role of accreditation in improving food safety.
Accreditation has a crystal-clear objective: it aims to assure businesses, end users and regulators that a conformity assessment body (CAB), such as a testing, calibration or medical laboratory, certification or inspection body, has the required technical competence and operates impartially. This competence is assessed by accreditation bodies against international standards and requirements.
Simply applied to food, accreditation helps improve food safety. Building on World Accreditation Day 2019 which highlighted the role of accreditation in adding value to supply chains, the 2020 World Accreditation Day spotlights accreditation’s role in improving food safety.
It does this across the whole of the food supply chain from farm to fork, through food production, processing and packaging, storage and transportation, to retail and catering, helping build layers of assurance in the supply chain.
Accreditation bodies assess Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) in a variety of different key functions, assessing them against standards which have been developed by the global community through the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) and International Electro technical Commission (IEC). These standards cover functions such as inspection, certification and testing. With inspection bodies, certification bodies and laboratories accredited to these standards, they have been independently checked as being able to deliver competent and impartial inspection, certification and testing services in all parts of local, national and international food chains.
In April 2019, a Joint Statement issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), highlighted the toll on humans of foodborne diseases. Accreditation aims to help support the reduction of these incidences through enhancing the performance of organisations in the food supply chain.
Accreditation is used across the globe to help meet this goal: from the use of accredited certification in Australia through the PrimeSafe scheme for meat and seafood supply; to the European Union using the accreditation of laboratories to support food security in Europe; to accredited inspection to help commercial catering establishments deliver safer food in France.
This year’s theme ‘Accreditation: Improving Food Safety’ sets out to illustrate how in just the one area, food safety, accreditation contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 3 of Good Health and Well-Being.
World Accreditation Day 2020 comes just two days after the second ever World Food Safety Day which aims to highlight the need for safe food https://www.who.int/news-room/initiatives/world-food-safety-day-2020. Through accreditation bodies and subsequently accredited certification bodies, inspection bodies and laboratories, the conformity assessment community continuously strives to help deliver safer food.
World Accreditation Day 2020 enables the International Accreditation Forum (www.iaf.nu), the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (www.ilac.org) and their members to highlight how accreditation is improving food safety. IAF and ILAC provide a range of information to explain accreditation’s role in improving food safety, including further illustrations of its use https://publicsectorassurance.org/topic-areas/food-safety-agriculture/
Seychelles’ accredited facilities
The Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS) as one of the main National Quality Infrastructure Service Providers is mandated to provide Standardisation, Conformity Assessment (inspection, certification and testing) and Metrology Services (legal and industrial) services to enhance the socio-economic development of the country.
Taking into consideration that the fishery export sector is an important economic pillar for the Seychelles economy, a lot of emphasis and capacity building were initiated by government and its bilateral partners to continue strengthening the bureau’s testing capacity for the export of fish and fishery products to ensure that such products complied with the food safety standards/regulatory measures of the importing countries and thus safe for human consumption.
The Bio-chemical testing laboratories at SBS were designated by the Fish Inspection and Quality Control Unit (Seychelles Competent Authority for the Export of Fish and Fishery Products) as the “Official Testing Laboratory”. It is to be noted that it is a requirement of many of the importing countries that the fish and fishery products exported is tested in an accredited laboratory.
The Environment Laboratory at the Seychelles Bureau of Standards is accredited to the internationally recognised ISO/IEC 17025 - General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratoriesfor seven tests in potable water and three heavy metal tests (Mercury, Lead and Cadmium) in fish.
The Food Chemistry Laboratory on the other hand is accredited for histamine test in fish while the National Metrology Laboratory is accredited for calibration of mass in the range of 1g to 20 kg. Such range of mass calibration is further used for the in-house calibration of laboratory equipment/instruments such micropipette, balances and mass pieces being used by the official testing laboratories within SBS as well as the local exporting companies in-house laboratories.
Accreditation to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard enables laboratories to demonstrate that they operate competently and generate valid results, thereby promoting confidence in their work both nationally and around the world.
The Southern African Development Community Accreditation Service (SADCAS) is the Accreditation Body which accredited these tests and calibration parameters.
As part of its medium to long term goals, the bureau is aiming to have more food parameters accredited in order to assist local food manufacturers, food establishment and food regulators in ensuring that food are safe and fit for human consumption.
Southern African Development Community Accreditation Services
SADCAS is a multi-economy accreditation body established in terms of Article 15 B of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Annex to the SADC Protocol on Trade with the primary purpose of ensuring that conformity assessment service providers operating in those SADC Member States which do not have national accreditation bodies are subject to an oversight by an authoritative body.Typically, in the developed world, each country has its own accreditation body but within the SADC region considering the cost of establishing and sustaining such a body and further taking into account the limited financial and human resources, the region decided to establish one accreditation body which services the accreditation needs of a number of countries. Over the years, SADCAS, the first multi economy accreditation body in the world, has proven to be a viable, cost effective and sustainable model which optimises limited financial and human resources.
Seven (7) out of the eight (8) accreditation schemes offered by SADCAS are internationally recognised with SADCAS having extended its international recognition to the Management Systems certification bodies accreditation scheme in November 2019. This means that the certificates issued by SADCAS accredited calibration/testing/veterinary/verification/medical laboratories, and certification and inspection bodies are recognised in 102 countries worldwide thus removing the need for repetitive conformity assessment checks. Effectively this means that through internationally recognised accreditation SADC Member States serviced by SADCAS have better access to 103 foreign markets – a truly global reach.
Contributed by the Seychelles Bureau of Standards
