Industry engagement. Involvement. Stakeholders. Problems and solutions. These concepts represent an exciting future for AOAC and its Organizational Affiliates (OAs). For a list of AOAC’s Organizational Affiliates, please click here.

The OA program is indeed growing into a group that can help solve analytical problems in industry, regulation, and individual companies through cooperation across their specific fields. Cooperation will bring business to all involved while it helps solve the problem that inspired it. AOAC is acting to bring all the key groups to a table to get started on truly synergistic work. This is what AOAC does and does best--bringing together key stakeholders, such as industry, regulators, and decision makers, to discuss their issues and needs and to identify and prioritize industry problems. This is perhaps the greatest benefit of being an AOAC OA.

AOAC has been encouraging companies to join as a special class of member: the OA. For membership, organizations receive a valuable return on investment that includes the opportunity to meet with key players to help solve analytical problems faced by industry; attend Board of Directors and Official Methods Board meetings, where they can raise issues of interest; network with decision makers of other related companies; make contact with key people in regulating agencies; and so much more.

Problem Solving

Out there in the laboratories of companies and regulating agencies are people with problems. They have to detect low levels of pesticides in soft drinks, demonstrate that dietary supplements actually contain what the labels claim, and test for a broad range of antibiotic residues in imported farmed seafood, for example. While they may be experts in their fields, the analytical challenges may be greater than any they have yet faced. Elsewhere are people with great expertise in antibiotics, for example, or in techniques like chromatography and mass spectrometry. And there are test kit manufacturers with experience in detecting traces of other kinds of chemicals in complex matrixes. Each group has a piece of a puzzle that, fitted together, shows a problem and its solution. And this is where AOAC comes in. AOAC is a neutral, third-party organization that has proven quite successful in bringing the groups (industry, regulators, etc.) together to help assemble the Big Picture through consensus building and collaboration to solve issues in a sound, scientifically valid manner. The Association uses its expertise and experience to reach consensus among stakeholders who are most affected by the analytical issue.

AOAC is currently working on analytical areas of interest such E. sakazakii in infant formula, pesticide residues in soft drinks, seafood, and other topics that have great economic or health impact and facilitate trade. OAs can begin to think about how they can solve (and benefit from) identifying areas that need methods validation and developing processes. Together, AOAC and OAs can work toward problem identification and solving.

Just one example of an industry issue is antibiotic residues found in imported farmed seafood. Exporters, importers, retailers, and restaurants are all debating how best to free the seafood on the table from dangerous residues. Regulators are trying to figure out where and how to test for the most effective way to stop these banned substances from entering the food supply. Instrument companies and test kit manufacturers may have applicable methods, but they aren’t aware of what a method must do to meet the seafood laboratories’ needs. Getting all these parties together to discuss the issue (or other problems faced by other industries, laboratories, and companies) would benefit everyone. Instrument and test kit manufacturers would learn what the seafood industry needs; they could develop and optimize methods, and AOAC would develop processes to validate them. Companies would sell columns, instruments, and kits to the industry, who could solve their antibiotic detection problem. Contract laboratories would find clients in the seafood industry, using the validated methods. Everyone would gain customers and earn profits—and the end consumer of seafood would have the confidence to buy frozen imported seafood again. Everyone would benefit.

It is hoped that the scope of OAs, though now largely in the United States, should quickly spread to the worldwide analytical community and to companies and governments with problems to solve. For more information on the Organizational Affiliate program, contact Dawn Frazier at dfrazier@aoac.org or Anita Mishra at amishra@aoac.org . To become a member of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, visit http://www.aoac.org/membership/joinindividual.html.

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