WAM DUBAI: The food section of the Dubai Central Laboratory Department's (DCLD), a part of Dubai Municipality, said it had received more than 26000 food samples for testing to assure compliance to standards in 2011.

The figure represents a 41% increase over 2010 as the number of food tests conducted in 2011 grew 75% over 2009, according to DCLD's director engineer Hawa Abdulla Bastaki.

In 2011, DCLD's food '&' environment laboratory section performed a total of 128000 chemical and microbiological tests on food samples and issued more than 26000 reports, she noted.

DCLD successfully passed the intensive assessment carried out recently by the Dubai Accreditation Centre (DAC) for the extension of its scope of accreditation under international standard ISO/IEC 17025 requirements for competence of testing and calibration laboratories.

WAM/MMYS