Alaska Food Diagnostics' fastrAK™ Salmonella rapid test has come out on top in recent trials in which 154 samples of processed cooked chicken and ready to eat (RTE) products were tested in comparison with a conventional culture method (CCM).

Yielding results within 18 hours from sample receipt, the fastrAK™ assay provided results with over 97% sensitivity and 94% specificity in a range of processed poultry foods. Samples were bulk inoculated at levels between 0.9 and 3.7 CFU/25g and gave equivalent results to CCM in 95% of the samples tested. When compared with the CCM requiring three days for a confirmed negative result and over five days for confirmed positive result, the assay saves two to four operating days.

fastrAK™ uses familiar culture and immunomagnetic methods combined with groundbreaking AK Phage™ technology, and compared with other rapid techniques has a lower cost per test, detects viable cells, kills the pathogen and reduces the risk of contamination. Extremely easy to use in the laboratory, the assay has a total 'hands on' time of less than 15 minutes.

It comprises two levels of specificity: an immunomagnetic bead separation (IMS) to capture the food pathogen of interest from pre-enrichment broths, and bacteriophage lysis to release intracellular AK from the target cells in a highly specific manner. A powerful amplification step uses the AK released to mediate the conversion of ADP to ATP and is measured as visible light by the resulting bioluminescent reaction. This 100-fold amplification process of Alaska's novel technology is key to the high degree of sensitivity of the assay and the fastest Time To Result (TTR) of 18 hours.