Taiwan's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine pesticide laboratory standards draw attention, GLP course registrations exceed one hundred
On the 13th, the Taiwan Accreditation Foundation (TAF) held a "Good Laboratory Practice (GLP)" standards training course, with participation doubling compared to previous years to reach a scale of one hundred people, presumably due to the impact of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine's announcement in July last year that testing units for pesticide trials must be GLP-registered institutions; many of those present were pesticide companies and laboratories engaged in certification business, hoping to further understand the standards and facilitate their applications.
Pan Yifang, head of the Biomedical Group of TAF's Laboratory Accreditation Department II, said that GLP is a system established by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to provide member countries with domestic data analysis and research result sharing; it mainly ensures that the processes and experimental results of non-clinical research conducted in laboratories are not falsified and are credible, enabling competent authorities to use the obtained data for product safety assessments. Although the domestic GLP certification system has been promoted for more than ten years, in the pesticide review section, because laboratories were not required to comply with GLP standards before their applications were accepted, few laboratories met GLP certification. However, due to the impact of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine's regulatory announcement in July last year, the number of laboratories applying for GLP certification increased substantially by the end of last year. As of February, there were already 14 qualified pesticide testing laboratories in the country.
Feng Haidong, Director-General of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, said that in the 98th year of the Republic of China, GLP standards had already been included in the laboratory practice requirements for pesticide physicochemical and toxicological tests, but these were self-determined by industry operators. Only in July last year was it required that testing units performing pesticide physicochemical tests, toxicity tests, and pesticide residue tests, whether domestic or foreign, must first obtain TAF-registered GLP qualification before that laboratory's reports would be accepted and safety assessment measures carried out. Most countries adopting GLP standards currently use this approach, so promoting this standard is also intended to align with international practices.
Pan Yifang added that in the past, GLP courses had enrollments mostly of 50 to 60 people; this time the number of registrations reached one hundred, which was also unexpected. Most participants this time were pesticide companies, because pesticide companies, considering commercial confidentiality, mostly set up their own laboratories, so once the regulation was issued, the number of participants rose markedly.
GLP has clear standards covering the responsibilities of researchers, instruments and equipment in the laboratory, test substances, and the operating procedures of the entire trial. TAF will actually go to the laboratory to conduct inspections, and then the review committee will decide whether to approve it; after approval, the registration is valid for 2 years. Pan Yifang said that for operators that do not pass, a 2-month improvement period is still given, so it takes about 6 months to get a result. In addition, approved manufacturers and reports will also be listed as TAF tracking targets; if the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine finds problems with the report content, it will also commission TAF to conduct another spot check at that laboratory, or directly conduct an on-site audit, to ensure that the laboratory's experimental procedures comply with the standards.