3M’s food surface hygiene monitoring system receives AOAC validation
3M’s Clean-Trace Hygiene Monitoring and Management System has received third-party validation from the AOAC Research Institute. It has received AOAC Performance Method (PTM) Certificate No. 041901.
The Clean-Trace Hygiene Monitoring and Management System is a rapid and comprehensive method for testing food or beverage manufacturing surfaces. 3M’s claim that the system detects adenosine triphosphate (ATP) on common food manufacturing contact surfaces with consistency and stability was evaluated through the AOAC’s (PTM) program.
The scope of this evaluation expanded beyond what has been evaluated for other ATP systems on the market today. It concluded that the 3M system is a reliable and rapid method for the detection of low levels of ATP, both as pure analyte, and from food and microbial sources, on three different surfaces: stainless steel, ceramic and plastic.
The study also evaluated the system’s robustness and determined the method was able to distinguish low and high levels of ATP when used over a range of activation times (2-15 seconds) and temperatures (10-35 C) often experienced in use.
In addition, study results demonstrate that 3M’s technology detects ATP and provides actionable results in the presence of common sanitizers used in the food industry.
“When we designed the system, we wanted to create a tool that would work reliably and consistently in the real-world environments our customers operate in, not just in a lab setting,” said Burcu Yordem, PhD, 3M Food Safety senior technical service scientist.
A full report on the research used for the certification will be published in the Journal of AOAC International within the next year.
Additional research comparing the performance of the 3M Clean-Trace System with other ATP monitoring tools was conducted by the ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University. It is available at 3M.com/CompareATP. More information on the technology can be found here.
