The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Laboratory is theregulatory food laboratory for the State of Oklahoma. The laboratory tests foods for bothchemical and microbiological analytes for the ODAFF - Food Safety Division'sManufactured Food Regulatory Program, and for the Oklahoma State Department ofHealth, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The laboratory is alsoOklahoma's Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Laboratory for FoodChemistry and Food Microbiology analysis.The ODAFF will use federal grant funds from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) toobtain accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2005 'General requirements for the competenceof testing and calibration laboratories' in food analysis, including chemical andmicrobiological analytes.This process is expected to take five years, and will follow the recommendations of thePartnership for Food Protection - Laboratory Task Group (PFP-LTG). The PFP is a jointmulti-federal agency and state partnership, hosted by the FDA. The LTG is thelaboratory committee writing requirements and recommendations for food laboratoryaccreditation as mandated in the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 (FSMA 2010.)During the fifth and final year of federal funding, the laboratory will apply to an externalaccrediting body, and obtain accreditation in the areas of Food Chemistry and FoodMicrobiology.Accreditation is a long cherished goal of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food,& Forestry Laboratory, and will permit federal agencies to use test results generated inthe ODAFF Laboratory for federal regulatory enforcement and criminal prosecution.
Accreditation of food chemistry and food microbiology regulatory testing activities is mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 (FMSA 2010). A national network of regulatory food laboratories is critical to public health in that it permits a coordinated, rapid, comparable and competent scientific data to identify, assess, and mitigate food outbreaks. The federal food safety agencies, FDA and USDA, do not have sufficient resources to address outbreaks rapidly, thus Oklahoma and US residents remain vulnerable to multi- jurisdiction outbreaks involving food-born toxins, chemicals, contaminants, and pathogens. The federal resources for food safety are particularly limited in the area of testing services, so this national food safety modernization effort to use all federal and state regulatory food laboratories is critical to protecting public health in this time of rapid dissemination of food products.
