Norpath Laboratories in County Durham has become the first contract food analysis laboratory in the UK to achieve Ukas accreditation for using the BioVeris salmonella test kit
Ukas, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, assesses testing, inspection and calibration services against internationally agreed standards, thus ensuring that customers can have confidence in the standard and quality of any analytical service provided.
Mick Wood, technical director, explained a little about the role of Norpath Laboratories and why the BioVeris kit has been such a success: "At Norpath we undertake microbiological tests to detect spoilage, indicator and pathogenic organisms in a wide range of food substrates, from raw ingredients to ready to eat products.
"Salmonella detection is one of the major tests we undertake handling more than 500 samples a week.
"Test methods have to allow a high sample throughput.
"Accuracy and speed to result are also essential particularly if the product has a short shelf life, is targeted for rapid release or ingredients are required for a manufacturing process.
"Many producers operate a 'positive release' system, using or shipping products only when test results are known.
"Each day of delay leads to increased storage costs and a shorter shelf life once the product reaches the shops.
"Conventional salmonella culture tests take four days to provide a negative, 'not detected' result and are time-consuming to perform, but the BioVeris salmonella kit gives negative results in only two days.
"There is far less manual sample handling required with this kit, with no washing or transfer steps and the detection instrument itself is self-calibrating.
"The technology the BioVeris kit uses is unique and I don't know of another system that detects bacterial antigens in quite the same way.
"We carried out a comprehensive validation study of the BioVeris kit.
"The service and support we have had from BioVeris and its application specialists has been exceptional and we have an excellent relationship with them."
