4 laboratories of Customs are recognized national quality

Classification and analysis of samples at the laboratory of the Customs Inspection Department. Photo: Hồng Nụ

Full of equipment and facilities

According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, till now, the General Department has prepared sufficient material facilities, deployed pilot program of the necessary work to be ready to perform tasks related to the analysis and inspection of standards and quantity, quarantine, food hygiene and safety standards for import-export goods.

Notably, the current central laboratory (of the Customs Inspection Department) and the laboratories at the Customs Branches of Good Verification have been evaluated to achieve the standard level as recommended by the World Customs Organization.

The equipment system includes a group of food analysis equipment including: mass spectrometry system (analysis and inspection of food hygiene and safety such as aroma components, pesticide residues, quantitative analysis, residues of medicines and plant protection,...); liquid chromatography - mass spectrometry (structural studies of organic compounds, analysis of sugar composition, nitrate and nitrite in canned foods); UV spectrophotometers, food colorimeters, heavy metal detectors for food ...

Group of microbiological analyzers (microbiological laboratory) including: Microbiological cabinets, microfiltration filters, colony counters, gel and imaging analyzers, DNA, RNA, viral and bacteriological counting systems, automatic microbial counters, automatic microbiological identification devices and antimicrobial agents, and other auxiliary equipment.

Regarding to mobile equipment group, 4 mobile inspection stations are equipped with basic quality analyzers such as gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, microscope, atomic absorption spectrometry, auxiliary equipment ... always ready at the key gate for task performance.

Regarding the management system, the management system of the Customs Inspection Department has implemented TCVN ISO 9001: 2008 standards.

Laboratory capacity includes: 4 laboratories accredited the standard of TCVN ISO/IEC 17025: 2005 (Vilas) by Bureau of Accreditation (BoA); At the same time, three microbiological laboratories were built.

In addition, Customs Branch of Goods Verification No.4 is also recognized as an inspection organization in accordance with TCVN ISO/IEC 17020: 2012 (Vias), the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development appointed Customs Branch of Goods Verification No.4 is a testing organization of organic fertilizers and inorganic fertilizers in service of state management.

Over 100,000 samples are analyzed and classified each year

According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, with the condition of equipment, modern facilities and high quality human resources, the Customs Inspection Department has achieved remarkable results.

The number of samples were verified by Customs Branches of Goods Verification has continuously increased over the years, and the whole Customs Inspection Department has analyzed and classified more than 100,000 samples of export-import goods at the request of local customs units in order to serve for customs inspection and control. In that, nearly 70% are chemical products, pharmaceuticals, livestock feed, the rest belong to the fabric, paper, mechanics, electronics... with 100% of the results were used. In particular, many cases that enterprises complained about the analysis results but after conducting verification at other independent inspection organizations, the results of the inspection were in line with the analysis results conducted at the laboratory of the Customs Inspection Department.

For analysis for food hygiene and safety and quality inspection, the Customs Inspection Department has acquired customs officials and civil servants who received basic training, focusing deeply on analyzing food hygiene and safety in order to check the quality of food categories such as agricultural products, milk, nutritional preparations ..., input items of agricultural production and food processing.

On the other hand, every year, the Customs Inspection Department conducts training, cross-checking the level of analysis, participate in the laboratory testing program to test the skills.

The testing results, test participation meet the requirements. The estimated time for returning results of quality inspection, food hygiene and safety is half of the time as prescribed in the legal documents, such as the time to answer the results of inspection of food safety of imported agriculture products are 2 working days (as the current regulation is 7 days), the time for returning the results of fertilizer quality inspection is 2 days (as the current regulation is 10 days)…