Workplace & health Screening

Surface Hygiene Monitoring & testing

The Food and Environmental Laboratory has an established program for surface hygiene testing.  Tests are performed in the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) endorsed laboratory by a team of highly trained and experienced analysts using the appropriate methods.

Methods

There are a number of options available for surface hygiene testing as follows:

• PRO-Clean™
  PRO-Clean is a quick and easy way to accurately monitor the cleanliness of surfaces to help ensure product quality.  PRO-Clean detects protein residues left on a surface after cleaning.  Simply swab a surface, release the reagent and if protein residue is present the reagent will turn purple.  The colour change provides a semiquantitive measure of the surface cleanliness.  The more contamination present, the quicker the colour change to purple and the darker the colour. PRO-Clean quickly validates the hygiene of a surface, allowing immediate corrective action to be taken if necessary.

 Pro Clean -Brochure

• Swabbing by Australian Standard Method
  This "traditional" method involves swabbing an area with a sterile swab and transferring the swab onto a sterile nutrient agar dish.  After 3 days incubation, any bacteria which have been transferred will grow and can then be counted.  The Australian Standard Method suggests that 6 organisms/sq cm is an acceptable level of detection.  All the materials, including sterile swabs, nutrient agar plates and saline, are provided at no cost.