Our History

The Jamaica National Agency for Accreditation (JANAAC) is an agency of the Government of Jamaica established as a result of a Cabinet Decision in September 2006. It was incorporated in March 2007 as a Company Limited by Guarantee under the Companies Act of Jamaica.

New ground rules of trade, established through various World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, promote free movement of goods and require that safety and quality of products be proven through transparent and reliable conformity assessment systems, thus eliminating technical barriers to trade. These new global rules require that governments implement conformity assessment systems that will ensure that the various agreements are met.

Consequently, JANAAC was established to facilitate trade between Jamaica and its trading partners by enabling Jamaica's conformity assessment system to meet international standards and the WTO's agreements.

The establishment of JANAAC is the first step. It is envisaged that by conforming to the new international principles for conformity assessment procedures established globally, eventually test results and conformity assessment certificates generated by Jamaica's accredited conformity assessment bodies will be accepted by our trading partners. This will effectively eliminate the need for Jamaican goods to be detained in the ports of third country markets and retested.

JANAAC began offering accreditation services to medical laboratories in September 2008 when they were invited to apply for accreditation. In January 2009, JANAAC conducted its first training workshop for assessors of medical laboratories. This was followed by an invitation to testing and calibration laboratories in February 2009.

The first accreditation was granted in June 2010 to a local testing laboratory, the Scientific Research Council (SRC). The first medical laboratory accredited by JANAAC was Biomedical Caledonia Ltd in May 2013. JANAAC later expanded its reach within the Caribbean and in 2015 granted its first accreditation in the region to the Guyana Rice Development Board. In February 2016, the first overseas medical laboratory was accredited, this being Eureka Medical Laboratories in Guyana. In 2017, the agency further expanded its scope to include inspection bodies and subsequently granted its first such accreditation to the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards Implementation Division in September 2017.

JANAAC is a member of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the Inter American Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC) and an associate organization of the Caribbean Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (CLAS).

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