Central Science Laboratory

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The Central Science Laboratory (CSL) was an executive agency of the UK government branch, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). It is now part of the Food and Environment Research Agency, which is in turn part of DEFRA.

It specialises in sciences which form the basis of agriculture for sustainable crop production, environmental management and conservation and in food safety and quality. It also houses FAPAS and the National Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria.

The Central Science laboratory (CSL) was the UK's foremost public sector laboratory in the fields of agriculture, food and the environment. As an Executive Agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), CSL was responsible for the delivery of science in support of Government objectives.

Officially launched in 1992 CSL’s scientific expertise dates back to 1914, through the bringing together scientific expertise vested in a number of other scientific laboratories.

A new facility at Sand Hutton was completed in 1996 for 134 million pounds^[1] the moving of the Aberdeen and Norwich facilities to the Sand Hutton site was not part of the initial centralization plan but was subsequently carried out. The site is now the home of The Food and Environment Research Agency.