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Dairy cooperative Arla Foods installed a new technology for measuring potential extended shelf-life (ESL) milk spoilage issues in three of its UK dairies.
Arla will be using GreenLight instrumentation from American firm Mocon to test ESL milk, providing results at very low bacterial loads in less than 24 hours without in-carton pre-incubation. This compares to between 48 and 72 hours required by the traditional, agar-based, standard plate count method, Mocon said.
To conduct the test, the milk sample is simply poured into a bar-coded APCheck vial, which has a built-in oxygen sensor. Samples can be measured directly or with nutrient media added. Unlike plate counting methods, no serial dilutions are necessary. Typically, GreenLight tests use a much larger sample volume than other methods, increasing sensitivity and the chance of detecting very small bacterial loads in final products.
Mocon business manager microbial detection Alan Traylor said: “It is well documented that counting technologies do not provide information about potential spoilage organisms. GreenLight has met the challenge of providing a product release test that is not only rapid but also has the sensitivity to detect potential spoilage organisms that might be missed by other techniques.”
Arla quality senior technical manager Rowena Marshall added: “We spent a significant amount of time evaluating new bacterial testing technologies and selected GreenLight due to its performance capabilities and affordability. Arla and Mocon are collaborating to customize GreenLight assays to meet desired objectives.”
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