Stopping contamination in its tracks at the Olympics
Invitrogen has been awarded a contract to provide kits for detecting possible E. coli O157 contamination in food at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
The monitoring program, based on World Health Organisation food standards, is conducted by the Beijing Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Olympic Food Safety program.
E. coli 0157:H7 produces a powerful toxin that can cause severe illness and even death in those who ingest it. Invitrogen's highly sensitive testing kits use Dynabeads anti-E. coli O157 processes to capture the bacteria and isolate the colonies from contaminated food for easy detection.
China's National CDC has sponsored a food safety network for several years using Dynabeads technology.
“Bacteria, particularly E. coli, can present a serious threat to public health at a major global event such as the Olympics," said Paul Kinnon, vice president of applied market at Invitrogen.
It is the second time Invitrogen products have been selected for food and environmental safety testing in the Olympic Games. Invitrogen's PathAlert was selected to monitor Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the plague, at the Torino Winter Games in 2006.