Can you say it's clean with confidence? 

During the food manufacturing process most of the cells die, but problems can occur when dead cells provide a nutrient source for the growth of bacteria. In a food processing system, the production line is normally cleaned from any food residues after a production run. The cleaning process should remove remaining food residues and avoid growth of bacteria which could contaminate the next production cycle. One way to check that the cleaning has been succesful is to take samples and grow cultures in a petri dish. the problem with this method is that it can take days before you get an answer and you probably want to start the next production cycle the same day or the next. Furthermore, even if the surface has no bacteria when the sample is taken, bacteria from the air may start growing if there is any food residue which has not been removed.

Rapid Hygiene Testing

The solution to this problem is to use a rapid method which shows if all the surfaces are clean or not. There are several such tests. the most sensitive of these is based on measuring ATP. With this test it is possible to detect, in less than a minute, the ATP in one typical animal cell (0.000 000 000 001g). There are a number of tests on the market from different manufacturers, but all these tests have one big disadvantage. When cells die, which often occurs during the food manufacturing process, ATP is broken down to AMP (Adenosine Mono-Phosphate). A dead cell contains therefore much less ATP (and more AMP) than a living cell. Depending on how the food is prepared and how long foodstuff residues are left on the surface in question before a test sample is taken, there will be an underestimate of the number of contaminating cells (and cleanliness) if you only measure ATP. Kikkoman have solved that problem by developing a method which measures both ATP and AMP. (In foodstuff residues the amount of AMP is often 10 times higher than the amount of ATP). This means you get a more reliable result when measuring ATP and AMP compared with measuring ATP alone.

Surface hygiene testing is also important in hospital hygiene labs and central sterilisation services, the paper and pulp industry, personal care/toiletries manufacturing, the pharmaceutical industry and water treatment labs.

ATP surface monitoring is the first step to HACCP, and Kikkoman's new Lumitester PD-20 is a rapid, sensitive and reliable measure of surface contamination.