Bill 569.

Summary.

The bill would create the National System of Agricultural and Livestock Reference Laboratories (Sistema Nacional de Laboratorios de Referencia Agrícola y Pecuaria) to determine commercial quality through verifiable methods. It would cover grains, primary agricultural products, animal products including milk and its byproducts, and other agricultural or livestock products designated by regulation. Its governing principles are producers’ direct access to verification, fairness, independence, technical objectivity, mutual recognition, and transparency. It defines accreditation, chain of custody, commercial quality, conflicts of interest, decisive technical determinations, authorization, and samples. It identifies the National Accreditation Council (Consejo Nacional de Acreditación), attached to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Ministerio de Comercio e Industria), as a body involved in technical accreditation in the Republic of Panama.

The system would operate as a network of accredited and authorized public, private, cooperative, and international laboratories. The Ministry of Agricultural Development (Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario) would lead it, coordinating, supervising, overseeing, and imposing sanctions while preserving the laboratories’ technical independence. A public register would list each laboratory’s identity, accredited scope, authorization status, methods, fees, and response times. Accreditation would follow ISO/IEC 17025 for the applicable product, matrix, and parameter. A foreign laboratory could be recognized only if its accrediting body is a signatory to the ILAC Mutual Recognition Arrangement or an equivalent agreement and its accredited scope is technically equivalent.

Commercial quality would be measured using standardized, verifiable methods defined in advance for each product. Possible agricultural parameters include moisture, impurities, yield, and physical characteristics; for animal products, they include composition, physicochemical quality, bacterial level, and commercial grade. In a dispute, a determination issued under the bill would replace the buyer’s initial measurement and bind the parties for product acceptance, deductions, price adjustments, and commercial settlement, without displacing existing health authorities’ powers. A producer could request an assessment or reassessment from a reference laboratory and would not have to rely solely on a measurement by a laboratory controlled by the buyer.

Sampling could take place on a farm, at a collection center, at a processing plant, or elsewhere in the supply chain, and be performed by the producer, buyer, or an authorized independent third party. Technical protocols would govern representativeness and traceability. Each sample would be divided into an initial sample, a counter-sample, and a third reserve sample, all identified and preserved under a documented chain of custody; the sampling record would have evidentiary value. Either party could request a decisive technical determination at the specified stages if the chain of custody remains intact. The request would provisionally suspend final settlement and economic adjustments tied to the disputed parameter. The parties would choose the laboratory by agreement or through a draw, could examine the method and seek clarification, and could challenge a laboratory or staff member for a substantiated conflict of interest. The reasoned determination would be binding, notified, recorded, and reflected in commercial documents. Each party would bear the cost of its initial tests; the decisive test would be shared equally unless agreed otherwise, with possible support for small producers.

The bill provides for cooperatives, producer associations, public-interest entities, and research centers to participate in laboratories, collection operations, training, and method development. It defines violations involving sampling, samples, accredited scope, chain of custody, conflicts of interest, and failure to comply with a determination; falsification would be a serious violation. It provides for cautions, reprimands, fines, suspension, or removal from the register with administrative due process, and referral of potential crimes to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público). The Ministry of Agricultural Development would consult agri-food supply chains on the regulations and initial implementation; the Executive Branch (Órgano Ejecutivo) would issue regulations within one hundred eighty days. The provisions would concern producers, buyers, intermediaries, cooperatives, laboratories, the agri-food industry, and academic institutions, alongside the named public authorities.