ONORM EN ISO 15213-2:2024

Microbiology of the food chain - Horizontal method for the detection and enumeration of Clostridium spp. - Part 2: Enumeration of Clostridium perfringens by colony-count technique (ISO 15213-2:2023)

This document specifies the counting of Clostridium (C.) perfringens using the colony counting method. This document is applicable to: - Products intended for human consumption; - products used as animal feed; - Environmental samples in the area of food and feed production and handling; - Samples from the primary production area. - ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat meat products; - Eggs and egg products (derivatives); - processed fruits and vegetables; - infant formula and cereal products for young children; - Multi-component foods or meal components. It has also been validated for the following other categories: - (domestic) animal feed; - Environmental samples (food or feed production). Because this method has been validated for at least five food categories, it is applicable to a wide range of foods. Section 11 and Appendix C provide detailed validation information. Since the method is not usually used for samples in primary production, this category was not included in the round robin test. Therefore, no performance characteristics were determined for this category. This horizontal method was originally developed for the analysis of all samples from the food chain. Based on the information available at the time of publication of this document, this method is considered fully suitable for testing all samples from the food chain. However, due to the large variety of products in the food chain, it is possible that this horizontal process is not suitable for all products down to the last detail. However, it is expected that necessary changes will be kept to a minimum so that they do not result in a significant deviation from this horizontal procedure. This method is suitable, among other things, for counting microorganisms in test samples with at least 10 counted colonies on a plate. This corresponds to an expected level of contamination of more than 10 CFU/ml for liquid samples or more than 100 CFU/g for solid samples.