QIAGEN’s Food-Safety Workflow to Detect Salmonella Earns Expanded AOAC Certification

HILDEN, Germany and GERMANTOWN, Md. —  QIAGEN today announced that its mericon Salmonella kit received an expanded validation AOAC Performance Tested certification from the AOAC RI (Association of Official Analytical Chemists - Research Institute) to cover testing of four environmental surfaces – stainless steel, plastic, sealed concrete and tile – in addition to the test kit’s 2012 certification for use with eight major food matrices. The evaluation by the AOAC RI, an independent third party international organization that evaluates analytical methods for food safety and other applications, assures companies and laboratories that the QIAGEN’s mericon kit and the QIAsymphony RGQ automation platform has demonstrated that it can reliably detect Salmonella in a number of food and environmental matrixes. QIAGEN has presented the extended validation studies at the AOAC Annual Meeting Aug. 25-28, in Chicago.

"Safeguarding against Salmonella, a leading cause of foodborne illness, is a key in our drive to build QIAGEN’s global presence in the food safety market," said Dr. Dietrich Hauffe, Senior Vice President, Life Sciences Business Area, of QIAGEN. “Food safety laboratories are increasingly adopting our automated QIAsymphony RGQ system for fast, efficient workflows, and AOAC’s extended certification of the mericon Salmonella kit adds further value to our offering. We continue to add to QIAGEN’s content menu for food safety testing as we build relationships with companies and agencies in the food industry.”

The mericon test kit provides all necessary reagents for detection of Salmonella subspecies (or spp.) and runs on the modular QIAsymphony RGQ system, which automates entire workflows from food sample to final result. The AOAC Research Institute validated the mericon kit on QIAsymphony RGQ, as well as in manual use, for low- and high-throughput testing of four environmental surfaces that are widely used in food handling. This is an extension of the existing validation covering eight different food matrices.

Sharon Brunelle, technical consultant for the AOAC Research Institute, said in a statement that QIAGEN "has demonstrated that the mericon workflow performs as well or better than the ISO reference method for environmental surfaces, extending the matrix claim for the AOAC Performance Tested MethodSM status." The AOAC Research Institute is a wholly owned subsidiary of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, a nonprofit global standards developing organization with a membership of more than 3,000 laboratory scientists and officials. The AOAC Performance Tested MethodSM certification has international recognition.

AOAC’s extension of its certification (PTM #071204) adds to the global validation portfolio for the mericon Salmonella spp. workflow. Earlier this year, the mericon Salmonella kit was certified NF VALIDATION by AFNOR Certification in Europe for the detection of Salmonella in food, feed and environmental samples (excluding primary production stage environment) under the reference QIA 36/01-02/13. The portfolio of validations assures food companies that the mericon Salmonella spp. assay and QIAsymphony RGQ, QIAGEN’s modular testing platform, which can be integrated to automate entire workflows in a broad range of applications, have been thoroughly evaluated by the major international validating organizations.