Note: Fees (prices) on this site are in GBP and do not include carriage / handling fees and VAT. Customers outside the UK may also incur local charges, including (but not limited to) import duties, local taxes and customs clearance fees, which may add significant cost to your order. Prices here are for the PT round or QC / Reference Material only and the total price payable may be higher.

$drupal->field_product_images[0]->alt

Product Specification

Not available.

Test Description

Milk powder and similar products such as infant formula are globally important and used in large quantities for direct sale to consumers and as a key ingredient in processed foods owing to its advantages over fresh milks such as longer shelf life. It is impossible to completely avoid contamination of these highly processed products during processing. Therefore, testing for indicator organisms is an important step in maintaining high quality standards.

Spores of Clostridium spp. are heat resistant and can survive processing, and food poisoning due to C. perfringens infection can occur when foods are prepared in large quantities and kept warm for a long time before serving, or is not stored sufficiently chilled or frozen prior to adequate re-heating and consumption.

Clostridium is a genus which includes several human pathogens (e.g. botulism, perfringens and tetanus), which cause illness via the production of toxins. In the case of C. botulinum and C. tetani these are extremely dangerous neurotoxins and cannot be safely tested for in routine food testing laboratories. Instead, foods are tested for the presence of sulphite reducing clostridia as an indicator of the likely presence and level of clostridia in the sample. C. perfringens is looked for specifically due to the less dangerous enterotoxins that may be produced, and consequently the high level of food poisoning caused by this organism (it is the third-most common cause of foodborne illness in the United Kingdom and United States).

Proficiency testing from FAPAS can help to ensure your testing practise are fit-for-purpose, by monitoring your results and helping to highlight any areas of improvement in your testing procedures. Our microbiology proficiency test samples combine the test organisms into real food matrix together with background flora to represent real-world samples as closely as possible.

Related Products