Thirty years ago, 3M launched its first 3M Petrifilm Plate, the 3M Petrifilm Aerobic Count Plate, ushering in a solution that has been widely viewed as a step forward in ensuring the quality and safety of food manufacturers’ products and freeing space and productivity in their labs. Today, 3M Food Safety builds on that legacy by announcing the global launch of the 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plate, the next generation of its trusted, accurate and easy test that can detect aerobic bacteria counts in just 24 hours for most food matrices.

“Ultimately, this is about saving food and beverage processing plants time and capital while maintaining the highest degree of accuracy and reliability to ensure customers and their hard-earned brand equity are protected.”

The ability to accurately and efficiently enumerate aerobic bacteria is important to food and beverage processors, who need to make time-sensitive decisions critical to ensuring their product quality and the stability of their manufacturing processes. Proven to be as reliable as Standard Methods Agar, the 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plate offers a faster time-to-result, technology that reduces the impact of spreader colonies, and a simplified inoculation area to drive greater efficiency and reduce costly retesting and delayed results. 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plates also leverages a dual-sensing indicator technology for easy enumeration of colonies in raw material, in-process and finished product food testing as well as environmental air, swab or surface contact testing.

The new 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plate has received certification (#121403) from the AOAC INTERNATIONAL Performance Tested Methods (PTM) program inserts. Specific studies performed as part of this certification involved comparison tests to the FDA BAM and USDA reference methods, along with robustness and lot-to-lot/stability testing.

“We are proud to be taking yet another innovative step forward with the seventeenth addition to the 3M Petrifilm Plate portfolio and our tenth product offering that delivers results in 24-hours or less,” said Jason Semerad, global marketing manager, 3M Food Safety. “Ultimately, this is about saving food and beverage processing plants time and capital while maintaining the highest degree of accuracy and reliability to ensure customers and their hard-earned brand equity are protected.”

Today, 91 of the top 100 U.S. food processing companies rely on 3M for their indicator testing needs. The sample-ready system uses an easy three-step process: Inoculation, Incubation and Enumeration. The system contains nutrients, a coldwater-soluble gelling agent, and a dual-sensing indicator technology that facilitates colony enumeration for most food matrices. Incubation temperatures are 32°C or 35°C.

For more information, please visit www.3M.com/foodsafety/RapidAerobicCount.