7 U.S.C. § 138a — National Laboratory Accreditation Program

(a) Establishing the program. The Secretary must run a National Laboratory Accreditation Program. Under it, laboratories that ask to be accredited, and that test agricultural products for pesticide residue or make public claims about residue levels, must be checked to see if they meet minimum quality and reliability standards. (b) Standards. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, after talking with the Secretary of Agriculture and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, must write regulations setting the program's standards. Those must include (1) standards laboratories must meet, (2) qualifications required for lab directors and other staff, and (3) standards and procedures for quality-assurance programs. (c) Accrediting bodies. The Secretary of Health and Human Services must approve State agencies or private nonprofit groups to act as accrediting bodies on that Secretary's behalf, carrying out the certification and quality-assurance work under this section. In approving them, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must (1) oversee and review each accrediting body to make sure it follows the certification program's requirements, and (2) have the right to get all records and materials needed for that oversight, from both the accrediting body and any laboratory it certifies. (d) Requirements for accreditation. To be accredited under this chapter, a laboratory must (1) prepare and submit an application to the Secretary, and (2) meet whatever terms and conditions the Secretary and the Secretary of Health and Human Services decide are necessary. (e) Exceptions. This chapter does not apply to: (1) a laboratory run by a government agency; (2) a laboratory run by a corporation that only tests residues for that corporation or its wholly owned subsidiary, and doesn't make public claims based on the results; (3) a laboratory run by a partnership that only tests residues for its own partners, and doesn't make public claims based on the results; or (4) a non-commercial laboratory that tests pesticide residue only for research or quality control, for the internal use of whoever ordered the test.