Welcome to the Family — Neogen Petrifilm Bacillus cereus Count Plate

Last year marked the fortieth anniversary of Neogen® Petrifilm® Plates. The global food safety company celebrated this milestone by launching the Petrifilm Automated Feeder, a system designed especially for high volume labs that is capable of feeding and enumerating 300 plates in just 33 minutes.

At the time, it was the latest addition to an ever-increasing portfolio of products that has fundamentally redefined microbiology processes for modern labs.

Continuing this long-running history of innovation, Neogen has now welcomed yet another addition to its Petrifilm product line, the Neogen Petrifilm Bacillus cereus Count Plate.

This innovative new solution offers food safety professionals a simple, reliable, and efficient method for testing for Bacillus cereus, a persistent threat to a wide range of foods with potentially deadly consequences.

“The Bacillus cereus bacteria is a pervasive threat within the food safety industry,” said John Adent, Neogen’s President and CEO. “For over forty years, Petrifilm Plates have been a trusted method for microbial testing. Our new Bacillus cereus Count Plate continues this tradition of reliability and efficiency, helping food safety professionals address a critical need with a solution they can count on.”

During the global product reveal conducted online in mid-January, Dr Sophia Johler from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich provided participants with an overview of the Bacillus cereus family and discussed some of the reasons why testing was so important.

“Bacillus cereus is ubiquitous in nature. You can find it in soil, you can find it in dust, you can find it in water. It is so challenging to food preservation because whenever the going gets rough, Bacillus cereus gets going and forms spores and it’s really tough to get rid of the organism,” said Dr Johler.

“One other problem is that Bacillus cereus has this extremely wide growth range, between 4 degrees and 50 degrees depending on the specific species that you’re looking at. Under a lot of conditions that we use in food production and storage, you will have a temperature that is permissive for growth in at least some of the species that belong to the group. So, it makes sense to screen and survey them.”

The Petrifilm Bacillus cereus Count Plate provides comprehensive testing for the entire sensu lato groups, including B. cytotoxicus, returning easy-to-interpret results in as few as 20 hours.

Neogen Field Application Scientist Annie Simmons said one of the reasons why Bacillus cytotoxicus had been singled out for extra attention was because it had been implicated in causing foodborne illness by the US Food and Drug Administration.

“It’s really important that whatever method you adopt, that it has the ability to detect cytotoxicus and some methods currently in the industry do not,” said Ms Simmons. “This is why we specifically want to highlight that our Petrifilm plate does.”

Not only is it comprehensive, the Petrifilm Bacillus cereus Count Plate is easy to use and simple to interpret, featuring clear colonies instead of the swarming morphologies you get with the traditional reference method.

This selective and differential sample-ready-culture-medium system eliminates the prep work associated with traditional agar methods, freeing up time for your team, while delivering confidence and accuracy for applications across the food industry.

In addition to the inclusivity/exclusivity study conducted during product development, Neogen performed a food study to demonstrate its performance across multiple categories including dry foods/spices, multi-component foods/RTE, dairy, baby foods, poultry, meat & seafood, alternative proteins and pet foods.

“These samples either have a history of Bacillus cereus contamination, are regulated in some regions, or are commonly tested for Bacillus cereus contamination,” said Ms Simmons. “We tested 120 foods and we compared the results to the ISO 7932 and saw no statistical difference represented by the p values at both 30 and 35 degrees Celsius.”

In today’s environment of heightened focus on food safety and increasingly stringent quality requirements, labs are under pressure to provide tests that are fast, reliable, and consistently accurate.

Petrifilm Plates have demonstrated consistent performance that has been cited globally with more than 200 certificates, recognitions, validations, and peer-review publications.

Food safety professionals around the world continue to put their trust in Petrifilm Plates. That’s because Petrifilm Plates have streamlined, standardised, and simplified the process of microbial quantitative indicator testing, improving productivity and helping ensure the highest levels of product quality.

To learn more about the Neogen Petrifilm Bacillus cereus Count Plate or the full range of Petrifilm and other food safety solutions available from Neogen, contact your local territory manager or visit neoegenaustralasia.com.au.