AFNOR is the Association Française de Normalisation – the French national organization for standardization. It handles the two best-known quality marks on the market: AFAQ and NF.
Microorganism levels
The validation for the 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plates means the plates are equivalent or better than the reference method when it comes to enumerating aerobic microorganism levels in dairy products.
“The Rapid Aerobic Count Plates are sample-ready, which can eliminate the time-consuming, cumbersome step of preparing agar plates,” said Jason Semerad, global marketing manager, 3M Food Safety.
“The plates are also compatible with the recently updated 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader for consistent, fast and efficient automated reading and recording of results.”
The 3M Petrifilm Rapid Aerobic Count Plate detects and enumerates aerobic bacteria in one day for most food matrices and environmental samples.
The plates had previously received validation through the AOAC Performance Tested Methods and AOAC Official Methods of Analysis programs.
Aerobic bacteria
The technology which was launched in 2015 uses proprietary indicator technology to count aerobic bacteria colonies.
To obtain AFNOR Certification by NF Validation, a laboratory initially confirmed the technology’s effectiveness versus conventional testing methods.
A total of 18 labs across seven countries conducted collaborative testing to confirm the method’s robustness. The Certificate Reference is No. 3M 01/17 – 11/16.
