Enhancing the quality assurance quality control programme of residue testing laboratories

The training programme was organized under the framework of the on-going Vietnam Project entitled “Increase quality and standards compliance capacity of mango value chain in Mekong River Delta”, a component of the Global Quality and Standards Programme which is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

Opening the event, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Huong – Deputy Director General of Plant Protection Department said “We highly appreciate the technical assistance of UNIDO and finance support of SECO. The training program is designed for 5 selected laboratories of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Ministry of Science and Technology. It’s very practical and useful for laboratory staffs. Its objective is to upgrade the internal quality control procedures of selected laboratories”.

Mr. Nima Bahramlian, UNIDO project manager added “UNIDO provides technical assistance to ensure that before products enter global markets they are adequately tested according to international standards and conformity assessment requirements. Countries are required to operate laboratories, which are able to test products and samples for compliance to international standards”.

Mr. Do Quang Huy, National Program Officer of SECO said: “Vietnam is one of the countries with the largest trade openness. Hopefully this project will partly solve the problem of quality and trade barriers to penetrate the large quality market. Quality control systems are very important. To help middle-income countries effectively participate in the market, building an international accreditation quality control system is one of the priorities of the Swiss government to help Vietnam participate in the system, based on fair trade rules. This quality standard project is one of SECO’s key projects for Vietnam. The issue of quality will accompany the issue of sustainable agricultural development, associated with the story of digital transformation in agriculture.”

The training program which will end by December 2021 concludes a sery of sessions covering different topics: internal quality control, measurement results determination and interpretation vs MRL, statistical evaluation, sampling principles, mornitoring programme, pre-export testing and control, etc. ….  It will contribute to developing the local capacities in product testing, in order to provide services to local testers, producers and exporters according to international best practices, and also to enhance consumer protection.