Private genomics testing company Clear Labs has announced two innovative new functions on its Clear Safety platform - Listeria testing and Environmental Mapping capabilities - to provide a "seamless three-in-one solution" for Listeria detection, monitoring, and determining contamination incidents.

In this way, it gives food companies access to insights that were previously unattainable due to the excessive cost and time to result, Clear Labs explains.

Clear Safety is a rapid detection method for Listeria testing that does not require multiple platforms or the creation of isolates, it adds. This "drastically" reduces the turnaround time for identifying and characterizing contamination and pinpointing its source.

Food-safety professionals can do a number of tasks through the platform with next day results, it emphasizes.

They can detect, speciate, and characterize any of seven Listeria species (monocytogenes, grayi, innocua, ivanovii, marthii, seeligeri, and welshimeri) in a single analysis.

They can also use Clear Safety’s Similarity Analysis to differentiate various types of Listeria in the food manufacturing environment.

Additionally, platform users can visualize persistence and follow the flow of Listeria over time on a customized facility map.

Finally, they can use the company's "three-in-one solution" to determine the true nature and source of contamination faster than ever before.

Clear Safety points out that through these services, it provides an end-to-end solution for users. Customers are not required to maintain multiple instruments, train additional personnel, or rely on another third-party for secondary analysis to be conducted.

This results in significant cost savings and operational efficiency for Listeria testing and Environmental Mapping, it says.

“Companies no longer need to depend on disparate technology platforms,” comments Clear Labs’ CEO, Sasan Amini.

“By connecting Listeria screening, subtyping, persistence monitoring, and mapping software into one unified platform, Clear Safety reduces the time from sample to answer and dramatically curtails operational inefficiencies related to contamination incidents.”

Clear Safety uses sequencing data for its subtyping and persistence monitoring.

Elaborating on how it works, the company says its platform catalogs the genetic “fingerprint” of each Listeria sample encountered. It then compares this data to the fingerprints of Listeria previously encountered within a company.

If the Quality Assurance (QA) team chooses to perform a Similarity Analysis, samples containing Listeria with matching DNA fingerprints are grouped accordingly, it explains. These are then tagged with metadata including location, date, and time.

Fo the next step, Clear Safety’s Environmental Mapping is laid over Listeria contamination on a facility map. This allows the QA team to track the flow of particular subtypes of Listeria through a facility over time.

With this information, food manufacturers can make faster, more informed food safety and operational decisions that result in time and money saved, the company indicates.

“With Clear Safety, QA managers can visualize their results on any number of maps they have created and filter for key data they are interested in,” notes Ramin Khaksar, VP of R&D at Clear Labs.

“For the first time, QA managers can truly understand the dynamics of Listeria contamination in their food-manufacturing environment.”

The Clear Safety platform is the first automated end-to-end next generation sequence-based (NGS) food safety platform for routine pathogen testing.

By leveraging the latest technology in molecular testing, bioinformatics software, and robotics, Clear Safety says it helps food safety professionals reduce risk with highly accurate pathogen testing, identify serotypes faster than ever, and react quickly to pathogen outbreaks.

In addition to Clear Safety, it notes that Clear Labs’ platform supports testing for authenticity, GMO, and microbiome testing.

The platform’s "unprecedented" level of automation and robotics reduces both labor and errors, and Clear Labs’ AI and machine learning provide trends, environmental monitoring, and predictive risk assessments, it comments.

Clear Labs has several dozen customers globally, including many of the leading food brands and service labs around the world.