19th meeting of EA Laboratory Committee

19th meeting of the EA Laboratory Committee was held in Amsterdam, Holland, in the period between 10th and 11th March 2010, and was organised by the Dutch Accreditation Body (RvA, Raad voor Accreditatie).

The following topics were presented at the EA LS meeting in accordance with the defined plan and programme:

- guidelines for accreditation bodies in matters of policy and frequency within which they participate in PT schemes; (document will be discussed again in 2010 and will be adopted as category 4 document);
- information from EA GA meeting pertaining to the Laboratory Committee, and relevant information from other EA committees (MAC, HHC, ES)
- information from ILAC workshops (sampling; accreditation of reference material producers, etc.);
- accreditation of PT providers (ISO/IEC 17043 was adopted on 01.02.2010 and the Committee established a task force (TF) the task of which was to analyse in detail the requirements of the adopted standard, changes it caused in matters of accreditation of PT providers, and proposed a timeframe and activities for the transition to the new standard);
- presentation of results of the survey conducted by the EA LS pertained to opinions and interpretations of representatives of the interested parties (it was agreed that representatives of the interested parties should give, by the next meeting, examples of how to present opinions and interpretations in testing results so that the EA LS could make more concrete conclusions related to this requirement of ISO/IEC 17025);
- work of the TFs for inter-laboratory comparisons in the field of testing and calibration;
- results of the needs analysis related to the amendment of the document entitled EA-4/09 “Accreditation for sensory testing laboratories” (EA LS will consult EURACHEM about their active participation in proposing amendments to this document);
-  results of EA review of the documents produced by the task force.

During the meeting two workshops were organised: work of forensic laboratories and their cooperation with the WADA, and assessment of the implementation of requirement of ISO/IEC 17025 that pertains to subcontracting. Total agreement was reached in terms of assessing the requirement of this standard, and it was concluded that there were no differences and unresolved situations amongst accreditation bodies