Request for Reconsideration

A firm requested reconsideration of a decision denying its protest against the award of a contract to supply tea to the Defense Logistics Agency's Defense Personnel Support Center (DPSC). It also protested the award of two other contracts to supply DPSC with tea. In its earlier protest, the firm alleged that the required tea standard and the method of testing tea for conformance with the standard were too subjective. It also contended that the inclusion of members of the Tea Association on the testing panel could have resulted in the testing being biased in favor of a particular Tea Association member. In this respect, a particular test panel will include the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Supervisory Tea Examiner, as chairman, and two tea testers from the Tea Association not connected with any prospective bidder. It was held that GAO would not substitute its judgment for that of DPSC with respect to the standard and quality of the tea it required. It could not be concluded that the standard was an unreasonable means for DPSC to purchase tea, because every bidder was required to create a blend of tea which it believed would meet that standard. Since the record showed that the testing method used was the universal practice employed in the buying and selling of tea, it was concluded that the testing procedures safeguarded against bias as much as was practicable. In the request for reconsideration and the newly-filed protests, the firm reiterated the arguments set forth in its first protest. However, the record showed that it filed a request with DPSC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), for the names of the Tea Association members on the three tea testing panels. DPSC did not have that information and forwarded the request to FDA. GAO has no authority under FOIA to determine what information must be released by an agency in response to a request under it. Since the protester failed to demonstrate any error of law or fact, the prior decision was affirmed. The protests against the other DPSC awards, based on the same arguments previously considered and rejected, were summarily denied.