Environmental Monitoring Program (EMP)

Conducting an environmental monitoring programme is the best way to assess your facility and control the potential for contamination in your manufacturing processes.

Environmental monitoring is a preventive microbial monitoring strategy to ensure the production environment is not contaminated by pathogens or spoilage bacteria. An environmental monitoring plan provides data to implement the right corrective actions in your factory.

A well-designed Environmental Monitoring Plan boosts your Food Safety Systems

Major global standards such as BRCGS require a well-designed EMP to measure the effectiveness of a current food safety plan in facilities. Likewise, EMPs can be necessary to meet local and international regulations.

With all efforts focused on end-product safety testing, monitoring major sources of food contamination and, in particular, the environment of production is often underestimated. Many product recalls can be traced to the environment of production. A well-considered and delivered environmental monitoring program is the best front-line defence against product safety failure. It can be far less costly than even a single product recall.

With over 50 years of experience in food safety and quality, Mérieux NutriSciences AQ experts have the know-how to develop best-in-class environmental monitoring methods in food processing environments.

Our experts have a deep understanding of global and local food safety regulations and perform a wide range of environmental tests to identify high-risk areas (or “contamination hot spots”) of bacterial contamination within factories.

Effective environmental monitoring programs include microbiological testing to validate if food safety systems in the factory are working as intended. Mérieux NutriSciences EMP plans confirm cleaning and sanitation procedures, detect the root cause of pathogen contamination and spoilage events, and therefore decrease the occurrence of consumer complaints and product recalls.

We offer you a robust environmental monitoring framework that enables systematic bacterial identification to improve the safety of all supply chain environments.

Mérieux NutriSciences supports its customers with:

Definition of a comprehensive environmental monitoring plan, customized to your food products and the factory design.
Environmental sampling and enumeration of microbial flora from air.
Routine environmental sampling with microbiological swabs
Bacterial identification in samples with accredited methods, including rapid testing (BAX, VIDAS) and advanced Next Generation Sequencing (Whole Genome Sequencing)
Support to assess the effectiveness of cleaning and sanitation procedures
Environmental monitoring audits: Mérieux NutriSciences can act as a third party to help companies assess the microbiological risk in the factory and issue recommendations.
Contamination investigation: root-cause of punctual or recurring pathogens contamination and spoilage events, and support with consumer complaints
EMP planning, data management, and automation with EnviroMap, a cloud-based environmental monitoring solution to streamline your sampling plan across several manufacturing sites.

Learn more about Whole Genome Sequencing for Bacterial Identification

Having an effective environmental monitoring program with a comprehensive sampling plan is crucial to ensure safety in food processing operations. With a wide range of environmental testing services, we partner with manufacturers to support them in defining each step of an effective EMP. Contact us to find an environmental testing lab in Australia.

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Conducting an environmental monitoring programme is the best way to assess your facility and control the potential for contamination in your manufacturing processes.

A well-designed Environmental Monitoring Plan boosts your Food Safety Systems

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