Assessment of the FSIS Accredited Laboratory Program (ALP)

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) is seeking businesses capable of conducting an initial assessment of the FSIS Accredited Laboratory Program (ALP) to identify gaps in performance in accordance with the most current version of International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission Standard 17043 (ISO/IEC 17043) and the ALP quality management system policies and procedures. Assessors provided by the contractor must be qualified as auditors and U.S. citizens. The Contractor must have Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) indicating that national and international accrediting bodies recognize the contractor's accreditations for assessing entities for compliance to ISO 17043 standards. The contractor must also be recognized by an official organization that accredits accrediting bodies as qualified to perform accreditation services under ISO/IEC Standard 17011. If you are a source capable of providing such a service please respond with your company information including a capability statement. This notice is not a request for proposals and the Government does not intend to pay for information submitted. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation of the information received. No contract award will be made on the basis of responses received; however, the information will be used in FSIS's assessment of capable sources. Responses should be submitted by 2 PM November 16, 2012. Faxed responses are not permitted. Questions concerning this announcement may be submitted via email only, no telephone inquires will be honored.