Microbiology Partnership

IEH staff is prepared to provide clients with a full service approach to your microbiology problem solving needs. We are equipped to use microbiological methods to solve sanitation and spoilage problems, conduct bio-assays and validations of processes, or to design sterilization processes. To assist our clients we offer the following services:

• Complete cause of spoilage analysis; including container integrity examination, identification and determination of probable source of causative microorganisms and remediation recommendations.

• Microbial Source Tracking (MST), a complete microbiological survey of the plant environment combined with DNA analysis of isolates to determine the sources of persistent spoilage microorganisms.

• Inoculated pack bioassay of sterilization processes that are difficult to simulate or for which conventional heat penetration or other testing methods are problematic.

• Source of calibrated spores test strips and organisms for use in bioassays of processes.

• Thermal death time studies to establish appropriate sterilizing values for food or pharmaceutical systems.

• Microbiological challenges and assays of “cold fill” food process systems

• Sterilant assays

• Available mobile bio-hazard level 3 laboratories

• Consultations