Micro Imaging Technology, Inc. MMTC -8.51% (otcqb:MMTC) announces the submittal of its applications to the Association of Advanced Communities Research Institute ("AOAC RI") for Performance Test Method Certification for the MIT 1000 System's for accurate bacterial identifications of the pathogens E. coli and Salmonella. In June 2009, MIT announced it was the recipient of the prestigious AOAC RI Certification for the identification of the Listeria bacteria species. Listeria is the bacteria responsible for Listeriosis, a rare but lethal food-borne infection that has a devastating fatality rate of 25 percent. MIT's System, with the two additional pathogenic bacteria identification processes certified, will have the proven capability of identifying over 90 percent of all bacteria causing food related illnesses. The AOAC Report is available from the Company.
The MIT System's identification process is significantly different from all other conventional methods and does not rely on chemical or biological agents, conventional processing, fluorescent tags, gas chromatography or DNA analysis -- the process is totally green, requiring only clean water and a sample of the unknown bacteria. Importantly, all test procedures for identifying unknown bacteria are identical and can be performed in minutes by a relatively unskilled operator.
The MIT System's uniqueness and the AOAC RI's extensive evaluation criterion required several months of collaboration to agree on a suitable Test Protocol for the Certification for Listeria. After the Test Protocol was complete, MIT and an independent testing laboratory managed by AOAC performed numerous identification and ruggedness tests to determine the efficacy of the MIT 1000 System. The Test Protocol was designed to: 1) Provide independent provability of the accuracy and repeatability of MIT's test method. After numerous tests, this testing phase showed that the accuracy exceeded 98 percent. 2) Test the System's flexibility if procedures employed by the user are varied from the Company's recommendations. A total of 406 ruggedness tests were performed showing a good tolerance to sensible variations in Company recommend procedures. The preparation of a Final Report in an AOAC RI's format was then submitted to their independent expert reviewers.
David Haavig, PhD and MIT's Chief Scientist, stated, "The AOAC Certification process for E. coli and Salmonella, following this application, should only require three or four months. Since the protocol for making test samples and also the procedure and software for testing using the MIT 1000 are identical to that of Listeria, the time required for AOAC RI to develop the E. coli and Salmonella Certification Test Protocol should be substantially reduced."
"The food industry is our initial targeted market where over $5 billion is spent in rapid ID testing annually and rising in excess of 9 percent per year -- which should accelerate after all the recent food product contamination disclosures and federal legislative actions. Further, it is noteworthy that MIT has demonstrated, without any modifications to testing procedures, the ability to ID, within several minutes and at a cost of pennies per test, over twenty different species of bacteria including the microbes E.coli, Listeria, Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA and other pathogenic bacteria," stated Michael Brennan, MIT's Chairman.