Why has my product spoiled?

Two specific questions arise when assessing microbial spoilage or a failure in sterility of heat-preserved foods: what organisms are involved and how did they gain access to the food? Julie Archer explains how we go about answering them: "In order to identify the organism(s) involved, we perform incubations on a range of enrichment broths and agar media, and at a number of different temperatures. This allows us to identify conditions required for the organism to grow, and for us to culture enough to subsequently confirm its identity. Knowing this then also gives us a clear indication as to whether the problem arose from under-processing or from post-processing contamination."

Contact: Julie Archer
+44(0)1386 842135
julie.archer@campdenbri.co.uk