RapidChek Select Salmonella test has been approved by the Technical Committee of the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) as an analytical method for the detection of salmonella
The method was approved at the NPIP 38th biennial meeting held in Portland, Oregon.
Strategic Diagnostics also announced full commercial adoption of the method by four food processing companies within the first four weeks of commercialization, each with an average annual account value of $50,000.
Adoption of the method by NPIP is a strong endorsement of performance attributes of the RapidChek Select Salmonella product.
The NPIP is a cooperative federal-state-industry programme developed for controlling certain poultry diseases.
NPIP consists of a variety of programmes intended to prevent and control egg-transmitted, hatchery-disseminated poultry diseases.
One such programme is monitoring environmental samples for the detection of salmonella species in poultry hatcheries.
NPIP samples tend to be high in non-salmonella, background bacteria, which interferes in the performance of many rapid detection methods that compete with SDI's RapidChek Select Salmonella.
These interferences produce costly, high false positive results not seen with the SDI method.
In addition to the NPIP approval, the Select technology will be added to Title 9 of the code of federal regulations, Section 147.12(b)(3).
"Strategic Diagnostics invented the Select technology as a result of direct input from NPIP and other customers experiencing test specificity and sensitivity issues in their salmonella testing programmes.
"Its ability to generate exceptionally accurate results in the most challenging samples, and to do so in a highly cost effective manner, continues to earn us new business opportunities and industry recognition," commented Matthew Knight, president and CEO of SDI.
The NPIP market segment for SDI has an estimated value of $6M dollars, and the overall domestic salmonella market has been estimated at $74M annually.
Commenting on the first commercial wins for the new product, Knight added, "We are excited that within the first month of commercialisation we have begun to see uptake in the commercial food manufacturing markets we have targeted.
"Converting four new accounts, all taken from competition, is a clear indication that RapidChek Select Salmonella is succeeding in delivering more value than the competitive offering.
"Today's announcement is another example of how SDI's focus on the customer is guiding our innovation and enabling us to deliver high value products to important markets like food safety."
