Strategic Diagnostics Inc. have filed a patent application in the US and in many countries throughout the world, seeking protection of a new enrichment media technology to be used in the Company’s food pathogen assays. Enrichment media is a significant component of the $1.6B global food testing market. Dependent upon the detection method used, media may represent more than half the cost per test.

The Company intends to release the first application of this new selective enrichment method together with a new Salmonella assay in the first half of 2006. There are more than 100 million tests run in the United States each year to test for the presence of Salmonella in processed and ready to eat food products.

SDI’s enrichment media stimulates the targeted pathogen to grow rapidly and become easily identified while suppressing the billions of other bacteria that can cause cross-reactivity and false positives, or worse: a false negative which indicates no detection at all.

It is intended that the approach will be suitable for other applications outside food pathogen testing, where enrichment steps are needed such as water testing or medical and veterinary diagnostics.