LANSING, Mich., Dec. 17, 2012 — Neogen Corporation announced today that its NeoSEEK™ STEC Test is now ISO 17025 accredited through the American Association of Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA).
 
In September, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a letter of no objection for the use of Neogen’s NeoSEEK pathogen DNA detection service to detect Shiga toxin-producing strains of E. coli (STECs).
 
“The ISO accreditation confirms our commitment to unerring quality in the execution of our test protocols, and provides further assurance to our customers that our NeoSEEK service performs as designed,” said Neogen’s Joe Heinzelmann.
 
ISO’s 17025 accreditation is the main ISO standard used by testing and calibration laboratories, and is regarded as the benchmark requirement for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.
 
The letter of no objection from the USDA allowed the use of the 24-hour NeoSEEK STEC service as a confirmatory method for adulterated samples potentially containing any of the six STEC serogroups (O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, and O145). The letter also states the NeoSEEK service is comparable to the reference method, FSIS MLG 5B.02, which can take three or more days to achieve a confirmatory result. This allows companies to use the NeoSEEK service to comply with the USDA’s recently implemented regulation that requires the testing of raw beef trim for six new STEC serogroups, in addition to the previously regulated STEC, E. coli O157:H7.
 
NeoSEEK assays a high number of independent genetic markers to detect and identify pathogens, which provides actionable results much sooner than conventional cultural methods.
 
Neogen Corporation (Nasdaq: NEOG) develops and markets products dedicated to food and animal safety. The company’s Food Safety Division markets dehydrated culture media, and diagnostic test kits to detect foodborne bacteria, natural toxins, food allergens, drug residues, plant diseases and sanitation concerns. Neogen’s Animal Safety Division is a leader in the development of animal genomics along with the manufacturing and distribution of a variety of animal healthcare products, including diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, veterinary instruments, wound care and disinfectants.

www.neogen.com