FOLLOWING the announcement by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of mandatory testing for six serogroups of E Coli in the food chain, ATCC has made available all six of the newly-banned pathogens.
Each of these non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli – serogroups E Coli O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, and O145 – must now be tested for on a routine basis in raw beef manufacturing and in raw ground (minced) beef supplies produced in the USA and imported internationally. The strains, sometimes known as the ‘big six’, are linked to a growing range of foodborne illnesses.
Representative strains from these six E coli serogroups are available from ATCC as positive and negative controls for food quality control assays.
“The world has seen outbreaks of non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing E coli for years,” said Dr Raymond Cypess, CEO of ATCC. “Our role is to equip food safety programmes with well characterised, standard materials for microbial testing”.