Laboratories in the National Plant Diagnostic Network, State Departments of Agriculture, or private/commercial laboratories that need to perform diagnostic tests for pests of regulatory concern could or should first be accredited. To obtain accreditation, a laboratory must have appropriate facilities and infrastructure, as well as appropriate and properly maintained instrumentation. An accredited laboratory would then be eligible to be certified to perform specific tests. Certification would require personnel with suitable training and experience to perform specific assays. There is also a requirement that these assays have been previously validated. In addition, the laboratory needs to successfully complete a proficiency test panel of blind samples and to periodically complete additional test panels to maintain certified status. A quality management system with acceptable information technologies is a critical element for maintenance of the system. While some elements of an accreditation system for APHIS-PPQ exist or are in development, several challenges remain, including increasing efforts in method validation, providing high quality training, the development of effective proficiency test panels, and so forth. The development of test panels are not easy to produce in some biological systems because of limitations to standardization that may be imposed by the biology of the organism of interest. Since the program is currently being developed for plant pathology laboratories, producing a parallel system for regulated pests of concern to entomology should be facilitated and the time required for implementation for entomological applications reduced.