Sucgang, R. J. (2018). Institutionalization of transnational research mechanism in PNRI laboratories vis-a-vis formulation of policy recommendation and the vinegar standard of the Philippines (Unpublished master's thesis). Public Management Development Program, Development Academy of the Philippines.

Public Management Development Program Middle Managers' Class Batch 14 - Anluwage Thesis (MMC)--Development Academy of the Philippines.

The plethora of synthetic and adulterated vinegar available in the market today and the associated health concerns is a serious issue that is extremely bothersome and requires urgent and precise interventions on the national level. The lack of a national standard prescribing accurate and reliable methods to verify authenticity, quality, and safety of one of the Philippine's most popular and widely used condiments, has caused it to become targets of fraudulent adulteration. While waiting for the approval and implementation of the standard, the CWG/Rep team updated and improved protocols and trained personnel of testing laboratories outside of PNRI who can also do parallel vinegar analysis. This was to ensure that the analytical competence and necessary infrastructure for testing vinegar for compliance with the standard will be in place, once the standard is approved and becomes fully implemented. A benchmarking activity was made by the scholar and his institutional partner in laboratories of BATAAN in Jakarta and Bandung, Indonesia. The benchmarking visit was intended to scout for best practices, compare prices/rates, protocols, and quality system policies in the isotope testing laboratories of neighboring countries, in anticipation for the ASEAN integration. These efforts and activities were meant to improve acceptability of the proposed Vinegar Standard. Notarized commitment letter were successfully colicited from major producers, pledging a halt to the use of glacial acetic acid in vinegar production. Setback, risks and oppositions from synthetic vinegar manufacturers who were initially opposed to the formulation of the standard were successfully managed through effective negotiation and provision of free trial isotope analyses for their products. Another opportunity came to re-present this ReP in the forthcoming Belfast Summit on Global Food Integrity which will be hosted by the Queens University, Belfast in Northern Ireland on 28th -31st of May 2018. An Acceptance Notice was already received by the scholar from the reviewers of the presentations in that summit and if all are going to be well, the scholar will again be presenting this ReP to a larger global audience soon.