Use of ATP detection to evaluate Food Contact Surfaces

Hi everyone.
 
I work in a meat processing plant that produce blast frozen marinated raw chicken and pork. To further improve on our food safety management, we increased our in-house micro testing for food contact surfaces.
However traditional micro testing takes days before we can release results.  Our Purchasing department introduced us with a supplier that provides ATP Luminometer that detects ATP residues faster (within 1 minute). The problem is I am not familiar with how ATP detection works. How can you set standards to confirm your sample passed or failed?
 
Hope someone can help me out on this. I would really appreciate your inputs.

Hi Escalante,

I am working in the bakery sector.

We use ATP swabs to verify our cleaning after production.

When you purchase the swabs, you will receive also the indication of the detection limits for acceptable and unacceptable.

I would speak with the ATP representative to ask for more information.

Dear dj.escalante,

if you would like an overview for a little reading, can try this -

http://www.ifsqn.com...son/#entry33440

There are 100+ hits if you search for atp on this forum, it's a popular topic.

The short answer to yr query on standards is that levels are subjective. instrument manufacturers suggest pass/fail criteria for their units based on combinations of parameters like visual data/micro.testing/their opinion. Brands also intrinsically vary depending on machine response characteristics.

Some people also generate their own standards.

Rgds / Charles.C

Correlation testing between standard swabbing methods and the ATP system you are using can be valuable (Sample the same area with both methods and develop a line of correlation). For me ATP is simply a go or no go test regardless of whether they produce a numerical value.

George 

Thanks Mercedes, Charles C. and George Howlett for your recommendations and advises.