MC-Media Pad CC for Enumeration of Total Coliforms in a Variety of Foods

: Background: Standard coliform count methods require the preparation of agar, the use of the pour-plate technique, the overlay of agar, and in some cases, the transfer of suspect colonies to broth medium for confirmation. The MC-Media Pad CC for the enumeration of coliforms is a ready-to-use dehydrated sheet medium with no agar preparation, no spreader, and no confirmation step required. Objective: Using a paired study design, the MC-Media Pad CC was compared to standard method ISO 4832:2006 for 10 matrixes including raw ground pork, raw chicken, cream, cream cheese, ready-to-cook vegetable mix, vegetable juice, cooked prawns, crab pâte, ham sandwiches, and cooked rice. Methods: Each matrix was tested at three levels of coliform contamination (approximately 10², 10⁴, and 106 CFU/g). Five replicate 10 g test portions per level were tested in a paired comparison by the MC-Media Pad CC and ISO 4832:2006 methods. In addition, inclusivity/exclusivity, robustness, and product consistency and stability were evaluated. Results: The candidate and reference methods demonstrated SDs ranging from 0.027 to 0.264 and 0.025 to 0.157, respectively. The difference of means ranged from -0.015 to 0.381, showing no practical difference between the methods. The MC-Media Pad CC detected 58/62 inclusivity strains and correctly excluded 26/31 exclusivity organisms, similar to the reference method. Robustness testing demonstrated no significant change in results when small changes were made to sample volume, incubation temperature, and incubation time. The product consistency study demonstrated no significant difference between lots of product and supported the 1.5 year shelf life. Conclusions: The results support the conclusions that the MC-Media Pad CC is a suitable alternative to the ISO 4832:2006 reference method for the matrixes examined and the data support AOAC Performance Tested MethodSM certification.