Food and Water E Coli Test Kits

FOOD RECALL PROMPTS STORES AND ONLINE RETAILERS TO OFFER HOME FOOD TEST KITS FOR E.COLI AND SALMONELLA

Coliscan® Easygel ® Plus* & Coliscan ® MF Plus* Chromogenic Media & Fluorogenic Media
for the
Identification and Differentiation
of
E. coli and Other Coliforms

The new Coliscan® Easygel® Plus does everything that the original Coliscan® Easygel® does, plus it allows those who may be unsure of the difference in color of the colonies growing in the medium to very easily verify that the colony is or is not glucuronidase positive. (That is, does it have blue color verifying it as E. coli or is it just a deep magenta and therefore a general coliform?) All that is needed is a long wave UV light source (available from Micrology Labs or other sources) and a dark room for viewing.

Your Coliscan® Easygel dishes and colonies will look identical to the original Coliscan® Easygel dishes with Blue/purple E. coli and pink/magenta other coliforms visible in ambient day or room light, but when you turn off the lights and shine the long wave UV on the bottom of the dish, any E. coli will be surrounded by a bright bluish fluorescent zone.

This application of two enzyme substrates testing for the same enzyme means that you have double verification for the presence of E. coli. It also means that the presence of E. coli may be detected and quantified as early as 12 hours incubation time.

Rapid Screening for E.coli, Total Coliforms, Aeromonas and Salmonella
in Foods and Beverages with ECA Check ® Easygel ® Plus

This novel, patented* medium meets a long standing need in the Food Industry for a simple-to-use, accurate and rapid means of testing for the presence of these very important organisms. The medium is available in the standard Easygel format of one test equals one small bottle of liquid medium plus one pretreated petri dish. It does not require any autoclaving. Following are instructions for use.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Prepare your samples and petri dishes for the inoculation procedure.

A. Prepare your food or beverage samples as usual.

B. Lay out and label the petri dishes you will be using.

2. Add 1-5 mL of your prepared test sample into the small bottle of ECA Check® Easygel® and swirl gently to mix. You are now ready to pour your medium into the petri dishes containing the test samples.

3. Pour the sample-medium mix into a pretreated petri dish, swirl gently to cover the bottom of the dish and allow to stand until gelled. (Or place directly into the incubator and allow gelling to occur there.)

4. When the medium is solidified the dishes should be placed right side up in a 35 C. incubator for 24±2 hrs. In actuality, most samples can be accurately read as early as 18 hours incubation time.

6. Interpretation is as follows: (the use of a 10X magnifier will facilitate accurate reading of results)

A. E. coli colonies (CFUs) will appear in ambient visible light as dark blue circular dots.

B. Salmonella colonies will appear in ambient visible light as green circular dots.

C. Coliforms other than E. coli will appear as light pinkish-purple circular dots. D. Aeromonas species will appear as clear pink/red or uncolored circular dots (colonies) and are oxidase positive (a simple spot test can be done by soaking a piece of filter paper with an aqueous solution of tetramethyl-P-phenylene diamine and picking a bacterial colony from a dish and smearing it onto the soaked filter paper. A purple spot will develop within seconds if positive). E. coli, Salmonella and Coliforms are all oxidase negative.

Total Coliforms are the sum of the E. coli (dark blue) and Coliform (pinkish-purple) colonies.

Additionally, you can verify or double check for the presence of E coli by shining a long wave (366 nanometer) UV light on the back of the dishes (do this in a dark room). If any of the colonies are E coli, the area around the colonies will fluoresce a bright bluish color. This fluorescence can also be used as proof for the presence of E. coli in a sample, thus making the medium an effective P/A test for E. coli if quantitative results are not needed.

The Medium is also available by special order with an additional inhibitor which prevents the Aeromonas species from growing, this simplifying the color differentiation of the other three bacterial types.

 

*U.S. Patents 6,350,588, & 6,787,332. Other patents pending.

FAQ

COLISCAN® EASYGEL® ES (cat. # 25201)
ES means "extra strength" and this new formulation was created with extra components to give it the ability to accept a 10 mL test sample instead of the 1-5 mL size allowed by standard Coliscan® Easygel®. This increases the sensitivity of the medium by up to 10X and allows a much larger sample to be tested in a single dish.

2. THE ECA CHECK® MEDIA GROUP

These media have been developed and formulated to enhance maximum versatility with clarity and ease of use and interpretation. For normal test samples of many types, they will grow, differentiate, identify and quantify E. coli, other coliforms, Salmonella spp., and Aeromonas spp. while inhibiting gram positive organisms and some other gram negative types.

ECA CHECK® EASYGEL® (cat. # 26001)

For more Information or to Place an Order
ECA CHECK® MF (cat. # 260EC) We welcome customer feedback!
Phone: 1-888-EASYGEL or 574-533-3351
Fax: (574) 533-3370
Micrology Laboratories L.L.C.
PO Box 340
Goshen, IN 46527-0340
ECA CHECK® EASYGEL® PLUS (cat. # 26301)
ECA CHECK® MF PLUS (cat. # 261EC)

E. coli colonies will appear as a dark blue color and may have a slight colored halo. With the ECA Check® Plus media, they will fluoresce a bright blue under long wave UV when viewed in the dark.

Other Coliforms will appear as lighter blue-grey colored colonies generally, but may show variation toward purplish/pink depending upon the relative amounts of the various enzymes they produce.

Salmonella spp. grow as light green colonies which darken with age. (They are indole negative)

Aeromonas spp. grow as pink (sometimes very light pink) colonies. (They are oxidase positive)


 

purchase Coliscan® Water Monitoring Kit