According to the CARICOM Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), The international trade environment largely influences the need for accreditation of CABs as governments increase technical barriers to trade in an effort to regulate their markets. Accreditation provides assurance to trading partners that an exporting country is competent to test, inspect or certify to the trading partners’ requirements, thus overcoming trade barriers by assuring compliance to the WTO/TBT Agreement.

Such an accreditation could be granted to different types of CABs, such as inspection bodies, certification bodies (product, management systems and personnel) and laboratories. Laboratory accreditation, therefore, is the formal recognition of an organisation’s technical competency to perform specific tests, types of tests or calibrations. 

Accreditation of laboratories ensures that test results can be reproduced to a sufficient degree in any accredited laboratory. It is an independent method of monitoring laboratory competence and performance and it assures the validity of results to users. An accredited laboratory can establish Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) with counterpart bodies. These agreements ensure equivalency of systems in different countries. There is automatic acceptance of test results from accredited laboratories, which are parties to a given MRA. Costs are reduced because there is no need for duplicate testing by both exporters and importers and this serves to eliminate technical trade barriers and facilitate trade.