Hello everyone! I am currently working on a non-conformance dealing with annual ambient air testing. I have several years of lab work both food safety testing that focused on cheeses and working in two cheese plants. Currently I work in an ice cream factory. We were told our facility was considered high risk and needed to perform ambient air testing.
I know from my previous experience in the independent lab, factories would buy DRBC plates and use them to test for yeast and mold. A plant I worked at tested air quality with PDA agar plates. Another one used petrifilm Y&M and petrifilm APC that we tapped to the walls for 15 minutes and read the plates later. I ordered PDA plates from an outside lab to use for ambient air testing as we don't have Y&M and APC petrifilm at my location.
Speaking to the auditor, I told him of my experience with ambient air testing and how DRBC and PDA were the standard that I had experienced and he suggested that would be a good way to go.
As it stands now, it appears for the non-conformity will require APC testing, however the lab we go through only had PDA plates for this ambient air. Are there any alternatives to testing APC or do you guys think Yeast and Mold is good enough? My past experiences lead me to believe this can be the case, but since I have transitioned from cheese to ice cream, maybe it's a bit different since Y&M isn't as much of a concern for frozen products. Does anyone have suggestions on how to test APC that doesn't require APC petrifilm since this will just be annual.
Thank you for your time!