Α.Ε. Τirpenou

The free transport of the products and carry over of services within and between the European Union Member States more and more is based on their quality and integrity. Questions related to health, safety, environment, food etc are daily emerged. In order to deiver such information, industries and test aboratories have to prove ddaily their superiority, credibility and technical competence with the impllementation of the appropriate QA/QC system.For many laboratories with a quality mark, achieved by accreditation, certification or a statement of compliance with principes of Good Laboratory Practice, is no less than a condition for survival in the near future. For the implementation and maintenance of a laboratory Quality Assurance System, several International Standards and Guidelines exist. Prominent examples are GLP, ISO/IEC Guide 25 and EN 45001, the later mainly applied in European Union countries. Although different terms are being used for the same topics, the basic structure is more or less the same. In our country since 1994, following the Directive 93/99/EEC, thecompetent authority for EN 45001 accreditation is the National Accreditation Council (NAC) of the Ministry of Development, for the Calibration and Reference Material Certification is the Greek Institute of Metrology (GIM) and for Good Laboratory Practice is the Environmental Department of the General Chemical State Laboratory (GCSL) of the Ministry of Finance. The National Reference Laboratory of the Institute of Food Hygiene of the CAVI-NagReF which is responsible for residue monitoring on animals and food of animal origin, is going to start accreditation procedures in January 1997, in the framework of a relevant project of the Ministry of Development and European Union. This project is a comprehensive 3 years programme of a bugdet of 250.000.000 drachmas and has been designed for the implementation of EN 45001 and GLP.

Volume 47 (No. 4 p. 255-268) / 1996