The Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation is an APEC Specialist Regional Body facilitating a reliable conformity assessment infrastructure through accreditation of testing, inspection and certification activities. The APAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) underpins confidence in each economy’s accreditation bodies and, hence, the reliability of conformity assessment of traded goods.  

A roundtable is proposed under the auspices of the APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum involving APEC food safety regulators and APAC MRA partners to examine how information exchange can assist in meeting the challenges to ensuring food safety posed by increasingly complex supply chains.  Building and maintaining open lines of communication facilitates coordinated responses to emerging issues and reduces risk to consumers by:

·     identifying local or regional shortfalls in conformity assessment capacity;

·     providing insight into the future development of targeted programs for building regional capacity;