New reports on good laboratory practice

The principles of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) are applied in the performance of tests to obtain data on the properties and hazards for people, animals and the environment of any chemical substance. The purpose of these tests is to submit the substances studied to the regulatory authorities responsible for their official registration as a preliminary step to marketing. This guarantees the reliability, integrity and quality of data generated for regulatory purposes so that they can be used by chemical assessment authorities and be recognised internationally without the need to reproduce the studies.

The OECD provides practical guidance to OECD member and partner countries on the structure, mechanisms and procedures they should adopt when establishing national Good Laboratory Practice compliance monitoring programmes. The OECD recently published the two following guidance documents: 

• An Advisory Document on Quality Assurance and GLP which sets out some rules and standards to ensure that the Quality Assurance (QA) program in test facilities including risk-based QA approach to ensure processes and data collected are accurate and properly documented in accordance with Good Laboratory Practice. 

• A Position Paper on Quality Improvement Tools and GLP that provides an overview of available quality improvement tools that might be considered for GLP and their role and operation when used in test facilities.