BOZEMAN, Montana ­- Capturing and identifying the germs that cause thousands of cases of food poisoning in the United States every year may soon become faster and more accurate following testing of new technologies developed by an Idaho company and the U.S. Navy. A collaborative research agreement between Rocky Mountain Resource Labs (RMR Labs) of Jerome, Idaho, and the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC), will validate improved methods for detecting four dangerous food pathogens: Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli, and Campylobacter. The agreement was facilitated by the MSU TechLink center, Bozeman, Mont., and the NMRC Office of Technology Transfer.

The project links two exciting new food safety technologies. The first, developed by the Naval Medical Research Center, is SELeCT (Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli, Campylobacter Test) that can detect and quantify any of the four pathogens in 24 hours or less. This compares with up to four days using conventional methods that require incubation of bacterial culture. In matters of public health, time is critical. Food borne pathogens cost the U.S. more than $1 billion annually in lost wages, productivity and food recalls. According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, the E. coli bacteria alone causes an estimated 73,000 cases of food poisoning a year and 60 fatalities. It is especially dangerous to children under 5 years of age and the elderly.

The other technology is a wet-vacuum microbial sampling unit known as the Microbial-Vac� (M-Vac) developed by Rocky Mountain Resource Labs. This novel sampling device lifts pathogens from cracks and crevices in foods and other surfaces, enhancing the accuracy of microbial sampling. The M-Vac functions like a hand-held wet vacuum: a technician emits a rinse solution onto the contaminated surface, then vacuums the fluid back through a series of filters that collect and concentrate the pathogens. The novel M-Vac system is more effective in collecting bacteria from crevices where pathogens accumulate, and leaves the microbial cells intact, which may be important for subsequent testing, particularly if DNA identification techniques are involved.

³This project is a great opportunity for an emerging company like ours to draw from the deep well of Navy research while demonstrating the potential of our own technologies and abilities,² said Dr. Bruce Bradley of RMR Labs. Dr. Bradley and Navy counterpart, Dr. David Rollins, expect that the joint evaluation project will increase the commercial potential of both their of technologies. In the long term, they hope to improve methods for more accurate and rapid sampling, identifying and quantifying pathogens in food, thereby reducing public health risks. These accomplishments will result in significant benefits to the meat, poultry, and other food processing industries.

RMR Labs is currently developing several partnerships with federal laboratories in conjunction with the MSU TechLink center, a regional technology transfer organization located at Montana State University in Bozeman. One recent development that TechLink facilitated for the company is a partnership with the NASA Food Technology Commercial Space Center in Ames, Iowa. TechLink¹s focus is to partner companies in the Northwest with DoD and NASA centers for joint research and technology transfer.

Contacts:
Dan Swanson
MSU TechLink Center
(406) 994-7736
dss@montanan.edu

Dr. Bruce Bradley
RMR Labs
(208) 324-7522
rmrlabs@northrim.net

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