Pesticides - Subcontracted laboratory

Hi all,

We subcontract pesticides analysis to a ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratory.

The pesticides tests are under their scope of accreditation but just only certain performances are covered by the accreditation. What I don't understand is when using the same method, some pesticides are covered by the accreditation but others are not (as per their analysis report).

Anyone else had the same issue with subcontracted laboratories?

What are the implications of this? Are this analysis reports valid or not?

Thank you so much in advance.

Regards,

Elsa

That's really tricky, I have that problem myself. What I know is that only those analyses are valid for which the approved methods are used (not sure, how it's in UK, but in Canada the analytical methods are to be approved by Health Canada). You may then find out which pesticides are not covered by accreditation and find another lab for those tests.

Thank you so much Olenazh 

Honestly I'd start by having a chat with the lab manager. It might be that e.g. the methods are recent additions that they haven't got round to adding to the scope yet.

The results are "valid" irrespective of UKAS/ISO17025 accreditation provided that the method used has been validated and followed correctly - I know a lot of UK retail/brand customers insist on ISO17025, but I also suspect that a lot of them blindly ask for this without fully considering the context of the analysis in question ;)

Might have something to do with the lack of compatible reagents as well.

It might also have something to do with the lack of compatible reagents. For instance, whenever I have someone run similar tests for the products I buy for my cafe, I always pay attention. I insist they use high-end testing kits, something like they have at mzfoodtest.com or similar to them. I have been running my cafe for a while and have never had any issues concerning the quality controls. I always look at this because it's better to overpay for testing than lose money in fines.