Yes new films are lab tested, but they are also field tested, Think of John Sexton's involvement with pre-release Tmax films, Ansel Adams with Polaroid. Harman sent out their Harman Direct Positive paper for pre-release testing.
Ian
Ian, those are B&W products. Of course field testing or some sort of trialing occurs on new products, regardless of what kind of product we're talking about. But testing color film with color prints is not exactly a requirement. In fact, with today's digitally-optimized papers, it's not even a very sensible thing to do. No doubt
someone at some point chucks those negatives into an enlarger film stage, but it wouldn't make much sense to incorporate much of those 'tests' in product engineering.
The marriage between C41 and RA4 is effectively past tense. Unless someone manages to breathe new life into it, of course. But it'll have to happen from the paper side, not the film side.