ISO/TS 19036:2006, Microbiology of food and animal feeding stuffs - Guidelines for the estimation of measurement uncertainty for quantitative determinations

This Technical Specification gives guidance for the estimation and expression of measurement uncertainty(MU) associated with quantitative results in food microbiology.It is applicable to the quantitative analysisof products intended for human consumption and the feeding of animals, andof environmental samples in the area of food production and food handling, typically carried out by enumeration of microorganisms using a colony-count technique, but applicable also to quantitative analysis by alternative instrumental methods.This Technical Specification is not applicable toenumeration using a most probable number technique, orthe analysis of low levels of microorganisms. In this Technical Specification, MU associated with "low" numbers of organisms1), as described by ISO 7218,is not estimated due to a lack of a simple agreed approach to cover this case.The approach of this Technical Specification is a global approach, based on the standard deviation of reproducibility of the final result of the measurement.1) That is below 10 colonies counted on at least one plate, normally corresponding to less than 100 cfu per gram or per millilitre, or 1 000 cfu per gram or per millilitre of product depending on the volume of the inoculum (1 ml or 0,1 ml).