GLP Requirements for agro and food sector


Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) standard have been promulgated effectively by US FDA and USEPA for regulated products and toxic substance way back in 1970's. In India such adoption is urgently required in the wake of the signing of the WTO protocol in 2005. Thus, India needs creation of facility as per the GLP principles and standards, for conducting audits in compliance with the international standards. It is, therefore, envisaged to have a facility with two distinct units, i.e. GLP laboratory for food industry and toxicology. The GLP facility for food industry is poised to conduct studies using analytical instrument and other test methods whereas the toxicology facility will conduct studies using animals. Both facilities must comply with GLP standards and should have a common quality assurance capability. As the food processing industry is also growing at a fast pace in our country and export potential of agro and agro processed products are on the upward trend, there lies a universal requirement that a facility to monitor and control the quality, especially for industrial chemicals, agrochemical, food additive, biocides, dietary supplements, cosmetic supplement etc. embedded in food and agro product be commissioned. Such state of an art facility will go long way in analyzing the food products as per the international norms and data so generated will be acceptable by any international agency.

Creation of such facility would also be ideal to cater to the needs for the analysis of food and agro products especially for the export sector.

The essential components of such facility should be embedded into

  1. A GLP laboratory for food industry, which will be essentially a facility for chemistry and microbiology testing. The facility will be poised to work essentially on product chemistry, residue chemistry, environmental chemistry and analytical chemistry.
  2. Toxicology facility; which is expected to conduct pre-clinical studies and should also evaluate safety guidelines of agro chemical, biocide, food additive, dietary supplement, cosmetic and industrial chemicals.


The capability creation would be the essence of a Center of Excellence which creates to optimize global analytical competency in the area of:
  • Testing of the sample
  • Product chemistry analysis
  • Residue chemistry
  • Environmental chemistry
  • Analytical chemistry
  • Analytical chemistry
  • Pre-clinical studies
  • Evaluation of safety of products
  • Human resource and training
  • Quality assurance and SOP preparation and
  • Information technology
For more details on the Pharmaceutical sector please contact:
dibyendu.sengupta@ciionline.org / r.n.chowdhury@ciionline.org

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