HIWU suspends accreditation of Pennsylvania lab

The Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit has suspended the temporary accreditation of a testing laboratory in Pennsylvania and has begun diverting samples that were destined to the lab to another accredited facility in Colorado, the organization announced on Wednesday.

In a release, HIWU, a private company that enforces the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, said that it had suspended the accreditation for a “minimum of six months” on the recommendation of its Laboratory Expert Group. The suspension was based on “nonconformities” with the accreditation standards, HIWU said.

The Pennsylvania Equine Toxicology and Research Laboratory is one of only four accredited laboratories in the U.S. The samples that were being sent to the laboratory will now be tested at Industrial Laboratories in Colorado, HIWU said.

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The Pennsylvania lab was responsible for testing all primary samples from tracks in the state, and was also being used to conduct confirmatory tests, according to a spokeswoman for HIWU, Alexa Ravit. In 2024, Pennsylvania tracks generated 6,614 sample collections, according to HIWU, out of a total of 74,534 sample collections from U.S. tracks under HISA’s jurisdiction the same year.

“HIWU is confident in the capacity and capabilities of the three [remaining] program laboratories to analyze all samples collected under the ADMC Program,” HIWU said in a statement in response to questions.

According to the statement, the “nonconformities” were “identified as part of the regular review process undergone by all program laboratories” under the accreditation program. All four laboratories are operating under “provisional accreditation” through the end of 2026 as part of a new review process begun under HIWU. A fifth lab at the University of Kentucky has applied for provisional accreditation.

Ravit said that HIWU could not comment on the specific procedures or processes at PETRL that triggered the suspension of the accreditation.

“HIWU’s review of PETRL is ongoing, and any impact on resolved or pending ADMC Program cases will be publicly disclosed in accordance with program rules,” HIWU said in the release.

Earlier this year, HIWU rescinded penalties for five trainers who had total carbon-dioxide positives called by PETRL and dropped pending cases for nine other violations. In that incident, PETRL agreed to switch to mass-spectrometry testing for total carbon-dioxide levels, rather than a clinical blood-gas analyzer, in accordance with the testing technology and procedures used by the other three accredited labs.

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