U.S – 3M Food Safety, a leader of innovative solutions that help the food and beverage industries optimize the quality of their products, has been named a finalist for the 2022 Edison Awards for its state-of-the-art 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced in the Commercial Technology category.
Named after Thomas Edison whose incredible product development and inventions transformed the world, the Edison Awards have been honoring the most innovative new products and services for more than 30 years.
They are adjudicated by the Edison Award Steering Committee, a panel of more than 3,000 leading business executives consisting of past award winners, academics, and leaders in the fields of product development, design, engineering, science and medicine.
The committee reviewed more than 350 submissions across all categories for the 2022 awards and determined the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced to be among the most elite submissions.
The Commercial Technology category recognizes advancements in technology that can help improve the world through the application of scientific knowledge to practical technological advancements.
As a finalist, 3M Food Safety is recognized for the advancement the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced has brought to the industry.
3M Food Safety first debuted the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader in 2003 to facilitate enumeration of microorganisms in food.
The number of reported foodborne incidents has since continued to surge each year, and food industry technology providers have risen up to the task to develop technologies to address this rise.
To this end, 3M enhanced its original plate reader to allow food safety professionals to enumerate more types of 3M Petrifilm Plates quickly and accurately, thus bringing to life the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced.
The modification has enabled laboratories improve productivity by automatically counting, recording and reporting results while maintaining accuracy comparable to a technician.
The 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced cuts the time taken by a technician to manually count colonies by up to 94%, a valuable opportunity for laboratories to save time.
It also a solution for labs to combat the effects of labor shortages which has been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finding, training, and retaining skilled workers has put immense pressure on laboratory teams, on top of the already high expectations to meet and maintain production goals.
Over the past ten years, 3M Food Safety has won seven Edison Awards, illustrating 3M’s commitment to creating innovative solutions that help solve tough challenges.
Past 3M Food Safety winning products
Past 3M Food Safety winning products include 3M Petrifilm Rapid E. coli/Coliform Count Plate, 2019 Gold Winner which enables simultaneous detection via a dual readout of lactose fermenting coliforms along with beta-glucuronidase producing E. coli within 18-24 hours.
3M Molecular Detection Assay 2 which emerged as a 2017 Gold Winner is a next-generation platform of 3M’s Molecular Detection System that simplifies molecular detection of foodborne pathogens.
The 3M Petrifilm Rapid Yeast & Mold Count Plate invented to cut the product release time by up to 40-70% as compared to agar methods, bagged the 2015 award as a Bronze Winner.
Further, in 2014, 3M’s Petrifilm Salmonella Express System, a sustainable ready-to-use solution for pathogen testing, took home the Silver award.
This was the same award it had taken home in the previous year, 2013 for its 3M Molecular Detection System, an innovative molecular approach for pathogen detection, making it faster and easier than cultural methods by employing isothermal DNA amplification and bioluminescence detection.
In 2012, 3M once again emerged the Silver Winner courtesy of its Aerobic Procedure for Lactic Acid Bacteria with 3M Petrifilm Aerobic Count Plates. This is a testing procedure that enables colony-associated acid and gas production visualization to easily count in a sample-ready format.
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