Food, drug testing labs for Rajkot, Bhuj

AHMEDABAD - Gujarat will set up state-of-the-art food and drug testing laboratories in Rajkot and Bhuj in the state’s Saurashtra-Kutch region, Health Minister Jaynarayan Vyas said Saturday.

“The state already has a modern food and drug testing laboratory at Vadodara. The state government has decided to establish two more laboratories considering the rising number of pharmaceutical and food processing units in the state,” he said at a news conference to announce the dates for the 61th Indian Pharmaceutical Congress in Ahmedabad.

Vyas said that the new laboratories, when ready, would apply for a certification from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Caliberation Laboratories (NABL) of the central government’s Department of Science and Technology. The Vadodara laboratory is already NABL certified, he said.

He said that the stringent standards adopted by the Vadodara laboratory for testing drug samples have revealed that foreign particles in excess of 20 per cent were found in certain samples submitted for quality approval by the pharmaceutical companies in Gujarat in the past.

“There have been drug samples tested in which glass particles were found in the formulation, the minister said.

Vyas announced the pharmaceutical congress would be held in Ahmedabad after a span of 23 years Dec 11-13 at the Nirma University of Science and Technology campus here.