AOAC Official Methods^SM approval adds new level of confidence for automated food safety testing

The AOAC Methods Committee on Microbiology adopted the method TEMPO EC for the enumeration of E. coli in Foods as Official First Action and assigned it Official Methods^SM number 2009.02. The enumeration of E. coli with TEMPO system only takes 22-27 hours compared to several days with the BAM MPN reference method.

'bioMerieux remains committed to taking their products through the rigors of the AOAC approval process,' stated James Bradford, Executive Director of AOAC International. 'Their continued achievements in gaining method adoptions through this world-recognized third party validation program has become a regular part of their business model for new microbiology testing methods.'

'bioMerieux is dedicated to protecting the health of consumers so we are very pleased to offer our customers the level of confidence that they need in their E. coli testing process,' said Alexandre Merieux, Corporate Vice President, Industrial Microbiology. 'TEMPO EC test gives them what they need most: time and flexibility in their manufacturing process.'

The TEMPO instrument is the food industry's first automated quality indicator testing system for the enumeration of quality indicator organisms in food and environmental samples. Automated indicator testing allows food manufacturers to dedicate limited time and resources to follow-up testing when the samples test positive outside of their specifications. Indicator testing typically looks for microorganisms, which are often strong indicators of the presence of serious pathogens.

By automating the otherwise very time consuming process of culturing and plate count reading, TEMPO speeds up the process, provides high quality and consistent results and removes the subjective plate reading process from the equation, while maintaining complete result traceability from sample prep to final reporting. In addition to generic E. coli, TEMPO automates testing for total viable counts, total coliform counts, Enterobacteriaceae, lactic acid bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, and yeasts/molds.