MEMBERSHP
Member Profile: Georgia Department of Agriculture Laboratory
By Carrie Crabtree, PhD, laboratory division director and state chemist
Staff from the Atlanta laboratory( photo on left) and the Tifton laboratory( photo on right). Photo: Georgia Department of Agriculture.
Year established: Our agency was established in 1874, and the laboratory followed in 1880. We started out in the main office in Atlanta as a Fertilizer and Soil laboratory, but it quickly expanded into food adulteration and other areas.
Location: We have eight sections across two locations. One is in Atlanta, Georgia and the other is in Tifton, Georgia( they are ~ 200 miles apart) and sometimes they share samples.
Facility: Our Atlanta laboratory is an approximately 11,000-square-foot facility that houses our State Grade A Dairy Laboratory and our Food Safety Microbiology Laboratory. Our Tifton location is a 75,000-squarefoot facility that houses the other six laboratory sections, which include our Pesticide, Animal Feed, Fertilizer, State Seed, Metrology and State Fuel & Oil laboratories.
Number of staff: I have 55 staff members( 56, including me— I manage the entire division).
Distinguishing characteristics: We are one standalone laboratory division with eight unique sections in two locations that cover all 159 counties in our state. We are under Operations within the Georgia Department of Agriculture, specifically in the Consumer Protection Divisions, where we serve as an internal partner to six of the other consumer protection divisions. We are one of a few departments of agriculture laboratories that are not part of a university. We do have external customers for some of our sections, but we also assist our Georgia Department of Public Health( DPH), Georgia Department of Natural Resources( DNR) and Georgia Bureau of Investigation( GBI). Our laboratories vary in accreditation from ISO / IEC 17025, NIST, Association of Seed Analysts( AOSA) and FDA Grade A program. Our samples range from human food, animal feed, pesticides, seed and fertilizer, to all petroleum products, and weight and volume provers. We are a unique mix of biology, microbiology, horticulture, physics and chemistry.
Highest volume testing: Our Seed laboratory has the highest level of testing at approximately 19,000 samples per year. Specifically, they perform germination and purity of peanut seed for all of Georgia and most of the southeastern US. Our Fuel laboratory comes in second at approximately 12,000 samples per year. The Food Safety laboratory would be our third highest.
Notable success story: Our Food Safety Microbiology laboratory has been part of several peer-reviewed articles concerning leafy greens and pathogen testing. They were most recently part of a case where the same strain of Listeria monocytogenes was found to persist on a lettuce harvester for many more years than thought possible, with samples that were positive many years apart.
Biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge is funding, specifically for salaries. This is especially difficult in laboratory sections where external funding may not be available to supplement salaries or even to purchase equipment. g
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