In laboratory management, ensuring compliance with stringent regulatory standards like ISO 17025 is paramount. Laboratories often turn to Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) to streamline operations and meet these requirements. However, assessing the suitability of a LIMS for ISO 17025 compliance requires meticulous testing and validation, which is where a sandbox instance of a LIMS can come into play. LabLynx offers a complimentary sandbox instance of the LabLynx ELab LIMS – the ultimate solution for your lab’s information management needs! The LabLynx ELab LIMS sandbox allows yo ..read more

In laboratory management, implementing a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) has emerged as a pivotal tool for ensuring quality, efficiency, and compliance. Particularly in the context of ISO/IEC 17025, the international standard for testing and calibration laboratories, LIMS plays a crucial role in streamlining processes, maintaining data integrity, and ultimately achieving and maintaining compliance. The LabLynx ELab LIMS is built to streamline ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation and compliance and is equipped with features essential for daily compliance maintenance and seamless audit re ..read more

We’ve come a long way from the days of adulterated milk and frequently contaminated foodstuffs of the 1800s, with food and beverage safety and satisfaction high on the list of societal needs. Demand- and regulation-driven change (along with greater understanding of contamination types and sources) has gone some way towards improving the safety and quality of what we consume. But there’s still room for improvement, particularly in a more competitive, data-driven environment. Informatics systems have come to greater prominence in that regard, including in the laboratories that help ensure safer ..read more

The microbiology laboratory associated with food and beverage manufacturing serves the important purpose of better ensuring the quality and safety of those who inevitably consume what’s produced. However, unlike a clinical microbiology lab, the food-safety-oriented microbiology lab has distinct sampling and analysis workflows that add challenges to any paper-based efforts to maintain those workflows to a high standard. These challenges show up in any attempts to electronically better manage those workflows, including those that turn to a laboratory information management system (LIMS). While a ..read more

The core principles of food and beverage quality and safety management Proper management of food and beverage quality and safety is vital for not only the manufacturer but also the consumer. Hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) methods (described later) remain one of the obvious go-to tools for food and beverage businesses, as it allows them to, when properly implemented, reduce risks to the business and its products. However, there are other considerations outside of risk management and HACCP that food and beverage businesses must consider. In the 2023 book Food Safety Man ..read more

What ISO/IEC 17025 asks of laboratories While ISO/IEC 17025 General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories has laboratory quality handily in mind, and it is increasingly adopted by laboratories[1], the standard is not particularly easy to adopt, especially for small and academic labs.[2] Additionally, several regions of the world encounter cultural, educational, and cost barriers in attempting to implement management standards like ISO/IEC 17025 and ISO 9001.[3][4] Despite these challenges, a number of benefits almost always sprouts from the ..read more

Testing within the primary roles of a food and beverage lab Food and beverage laboratory personnel tap into numerous scientific disciplines for the work they do. Among the various roles the food and beverage lab serves, disciplines such as biochemistry, biotechnology, chemical engineering, chemistry, fermentation science, materials science, microbiology, molecular gastronomy, and nutrition and food science are applied.[1][2][3][4] As such, a diverse skillset is typically required by the food and beverage scientist, requiring not only hard skills in microbiology, biochemistry, and fermentation ..read more

Food and beverage labs and the LAAF program The Food Safety Modernization ACT (FSMA) was signed into law in January 2011, giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broader authority to regulate how the country’s food supply is grown, harvested, and processed. The FSMA was amended in December 2021 to include the Laboratory Accreditation for Analyses of Foods (LAAF) rule, mandating that “testing of food in certain circumstances” be performed by LAAF-accredited laboratories[1], as part of the overarching goals of the FSMA. (However, the FDA notes that these testing scenarios represent “c ..read more

International food and beverage safety through regulatory-driven operational standardization When discussing the landscape of food and beverage safety and it regulation, it’s difficult not to mention standards like ISO 22000 and ISO/IEC 17025. Most competitive and well-established food and beverage companies will already be accredited to the ISO 22000:2018 standard, and if they have an in-house research and development (R&D) or quality testing laboratory, to the ISO/IEC 17025:2017 standard. Both are internationally recognized standards that attempt to globally harmonize approaches to both ..read more

LIMS and quality management In order to be most successful—while meeting the requirements of standards and regulatory pressures—a laboratory must focus on a culture of quality.[1] A quality management system (QMS) is one means for a laboratory to put additional focus on quality, and ISO/IEC 17025:2017—at least in spirit—promotes the adoption of a QMS. This inevitably provides a number of benefits to the lab, as well as its clients. However, while ISO/IEC 17025 compliance proves useful to a laboratory, it still asks a lot of the laboratory in order to conform with the standard.[2] Con ..read more