Clear Labs, the only automated and intelligent next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform purpose-built for food safety testing, have announced that its flagship product, Clear Safety, has received AOAC Performance Tested certification for Salmonella enterica testing, license number #111802.

This announcement comes right after Clear Labs’ Series B2 raise and serves as further validation of the effectiveness of the new NGS-based food safety platform. Currently, Clear Safety supports high-volume testing for the detection of Salmonella enterica and Salmonella bongori in select foods and environmental surfaces. The company plans to add support for environmental mapping and additional pathogens including Listeria, E. coli, and Campylobacter in 2019.

“AOAC’s program represents the premier method certification in the United States, and we’re thrilled to have the Clear Safety Salmonella test approved via their rigorous standards,” said Sasan Amini, CEO of Clear Labs. “NGS is the future of food safety. This certification serves as yet another proof point for the food industry, ensuring they can depend on our claims around accuracy and turnaround time.”

The AOAC test found that Clear Safety provides qualitative detection of Salmonella enterica. In inclusivity and exclusivity evaluations to test the sensitivity and specificity of the Clear Safety Method, the platform performed as well or better than the relevant chapters from FDA’s Bacterial Analytical Manual and FSIS’s Microbiology Laboratory Guidebook.

Clear Safety combines state-of-the-art NGS sequencing, advanced microbiology, robotic automation, data science, and software analytics to significantly lower costs while achieving greater than 99.9% accuracy. In addition to AOAC certification, Clear Labs has also received accreditation from A2LA for technical competence in the field of biological testing.

Clear Safety collects hundreds of millions of data points per analysis that can be used to understand the entire microbial makeup of a sample. This data also serves as the foundation for new applications from predictive risk assessment to shelf-life studies to quality evaluations. Since its founding in 2014, the company has built the world’s largest food genomics database, which is comprised of millions of entries. This richness of information generated from a single sequencing run serves as a gateway to a wealth of knowledge that food manufacturers and microbiology labs can leverage for improved profitability, productivity, and predictability.

Clear Labs has over 40 customers globally, including many of the leading food brands and service labs around the world.

To learn more about Clear Labs, please visit: http://www.clearlabs.com/.