Dear Trade Partners,
Through its programs and testing services, LCBO's Quality Assurance supports the organization’s goal of ensuring Ontarians have access to safe, authentic, quality products that are compliant with regulations.
To ensure consumer protection, the LCBO’s Quality Assurance laboratory routinely tests beverage alcohol products for presence of contaminants and additives, validates compositional standards, and verifies that product label claims are true and not misleading.
In the past few months, our Quality Assurance introduced several testing enhancements to reflect evolving agricultural and manufacturing practices, consumer preferences and new regulatory requirements. These enhancements include:
• Standard testing to routinely test all beers for sugar content;
• Standard testing to routinely test all dry spirits for non-permissible presence of sugar;
• Validating sugar claims on product labels when present, using new, specialized testing methodologies; and
• Expanding heavy metal analysis to include new metals of interest.
In light of these enhancements and the rising cost of testing, Quality Assurance fees for chemical analysis of beverage alcohol products will be increasing effective April 1, 2024 as follows:
The standard lab testing fees will continue to be applied for products where the annual quantity exceeds 90L. For products where the full testing fee is not applicable, a processing fee of $55 (plus taxes) will apply. The cost of all standard analyses performed by the LCBO Quality Assurance laboratory will be charged back to the supplier of the product.
Inquiries about Quality Assurance requirements for product testing and compliance or laboratory testing services may be directed to quality.assurance@lcbo.com or (416) 864-6724.
Thank you for your continued partnership.
Quality Assurance