International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation
The arrangement that makes an accredited test result travel: signatory accreditation bodies mutually recognise each other’s ISO/IEC 17025 accreditations.
WHAT ILAC COVERS
The International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation is the global association of accreditation bodies that accredit laboratories, inspection bodies, proficiency-testing providers, and reference-material producers. It accredits nothing itself. Its function is one level up: it operates the arrangement through which its members recognise each other's accreditations, so that an accredited result issued in one economy is accepted in another.
WHERE IT SITS INTERNATIONALLY
ILAC works alongside the International Accreditation Forum, which performs the equivalent role for management-system, product, and personnel certification bodies; the two publish jointly and have progressively converged their arrangements. The technical standards underneath are ISO/IEC 17025 for testing and calibration laboratories, ISO 15189 for medical laboratories, and ISO/IEC 17011 for the accreditation bodies themselves. For SPEQ's testing-laboratory sector this is the load-bearing structure: a GxP organisation relying on an overseas contract laboratory is, whether or not it says so, relying on the ILAC arrangement to make that result mean anything.
HOW ITS REQUIREMENTS BITE
Recognition through peer evaluation. An accreditation body becomes a signatory to the ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement by being evaluated by its peers against the relevant ISO/IEC 17011 requirements, and it is re-evaluated on a cycle to retain that status. This is a genuinely different mechanism from the regulator-to-regulator mutual recognition agreements that govern GMP inspection: no authority sits at the top granting recognition, and no government is a party. What travels is technical competence, within a defined scope, evidenced by a chain of peer assessment.
WHAT ILAC PUBLISHES
- 01The ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement and the published register of signatory accreditation bodies, searchable by economy and accreditation scope
- 02ILAC P- and G-series documents — the policies and guidance signatories apply, including on measurement uncertainty and traceability
- 03Joint ILAC–IAF documents on the application of accreditation and the use of accreditation symbols
- 04Guidance on the ILAC MRA mark and its correct use on reports and certificates
WHAT PRACTITIONERS GET WRONG
- ›"ILAC-accredited" is not a property of a laboratory. Accreditation is granted by an accreditation body; ILAC recognition is a property of that body. Naming the accreditation body is the check that actually means something.
- ›Recognition applies only within the accredited scope, so verify both the signatory status and the specific scope through ILAC's published signatory search rather than trusting a claim in a report footer.
- ›Do not equate the ILAC MRA with a GMP mutual recognition agreement — they cover different things, are granted by different mechanisms, and one does not imply the other.
- ›Signatory status and scopes change. Re-verify at periodic supplier review rather than at qualification only.
- ›For a contract laboratory doing GMP work, accreditation and GMP compliance are separate questions: 17025 evidences competence for defined methods, GMP governs whether the laboratory operates inside a compliant quality system.
ILAC STANDARDS SPEQ DECODES · 1
DISCIPLINES IN ILAC’S REMIT
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