Testing pathogens in NIZO’s BSL2 facility

Evaluate and test your product for pathogen inactivation or growth, safely

Food safety is a constant challenge, and testing your product concept for potential pathogen growth using real microbes is a key step before going to market. At the same time, you don’t want to take the risk of potentially introducing dangerous pathogens into your own facilities, by conducting challenge tests at your site.

Spiking products off the line, safely

With our complete, food-grade pilot plant, we can produce your product concept and then inoculate it right off the production line in our BSL2 facility, with pathogens or spoilage organisms from our in-house collection. It stays under controlled conditions, safe and far away from your own premises.

We can also produce small batches of your product with variable compositions directly in our BSL2 facilities, and inoculate them with pathogens before processing, to determine the effect of manufacturing conditions.

In service labs, we keep the spiked products under a variety of conditions, to monitor bacterial growth and concentrations after processing and over time. Then we interpret the data, and provide you with practical, independent advice, based on more than70 years of experience and expertise in the control of pathogens, spoilage microorganisms and contaminants in foods.

NIZO can:

• Produce different batches of your product concept and inoculate them right off the production line
• Inoculate products in our BSL2 facilities and determine the effect of processing conditions
• Make optimal use of our own, in-house pathogen collection
• Keep the ‘spiked’ product under a variety of storage conditions
• Evaluate the data over time
• Provide independent, expert advice based on real data results