Quality control of culture media — perspectives and problems

The Working Party on Culture Media (WPCM) of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS) has promoted and facilitated the development of methods for quality control of culture media used for the detection and enumeration of food-borne microorganisms since the early 1980s. While progress has been made in establishing protocols to test for productivity and selectivity of media, problems associated with the influence of food constituents and background microflora, as well as the presence of sublethally injured cells in test foods, are yet to be fully addressed before optimum methods for assessing the quality of media can be defined. However, for various reasons, the development of standardised procedures which account for the influence of food constituents or state of debilitation of target microorganisms may not be practical or even desirable.