Essentials of quality in "the gold standard veterinary clinical trial".

Quality Assurance (QA) has played a pivotal role within Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) since its inception in 1976. GLP is now recognized as a quality standard, as can be seen from the introductory statement of the recently issued OECD Principles of GLP (revised in 1997) that clearly state "GLP is a quality system concerned with the organisational process and the conditions under which non-clinical health and environmental safety studies are planned, performed, monitored, recorded, archived and reported". We can, therefore, see a close comparison between GLP compliance and the ISO/EN accreditation systems that have been adopted by other institutes on a worldwide basis.