Food Safety Matters

Listeria Right Now: Innovations in Food Safety

This special BONUS episode of Food Safety Matters focuses on Listeria Right Now, an environmental Listeria test offering molecular-level accuracy, with no enrichment and a total time to results of under one hour. This innovative food safety product was introduced at the annual IAFP meeting this year, with many people remarking that it was a “game changer”.

Because of the pervasiveness of Listeria in the environment, the risk that Listeria can be introduced into a food processing facilities can happen at any time. The goal of an environmental monitoring program is to verify the effectiveness of contamination control programs, identify microbial harborage sites, and ensure that corrective actions have eliminated organisms such as Listeria from the plant.

With the intent of helping to control this ubiquitous pathogen in food processing facilities, Neogen has developed a one-hour Listeria test that features the total elimination of the enrichment process. Neogen’s new Listeria Right Now test is fast and flexible enough to be used in a “seek and destroy” mode, as well as to identify vectors and sources of contamination.

To understand the practical applications of this innovative new pathogen test and the possibilities it brings to food processing and production we spoke with Jim Topper, a senior marketing development manager with Neogen.

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In this episode, we speak with Neogen’s Jim Topper about:

Conventional environmental monitoring methods and how Listeria Right Now has moved the needle.
FDA’s guidance on Listeria testing that supports “seek and destroy” methods.
What the Listeria Right Now actually is.
Obtaining Listeria test results in under one hour and the timeline to results.
The types of validations performed for the Listeria Right Now system.
How this product will be used throughout the food industry.
Whether the product should be used for all Listeria testing.