Ensuring accurate bacterial counts
In another multidisciplinary project, Dr. Annel Greene along with microbiologist Dr. Thomas Hughes of Biological Sciences and Dr. William Bridges, Jr. of Experimental Statistics are working to develop accurate methods for enumerating bacteria in high-fat rendered animal co-products.
The high fat content of rendered materials confounds standard microbial dilution methods, causing extreme errors in bacterial enumeration. Unless better methodology can be created to ensure accuracy in bacterial counts, all microbiological studies on rendered animal co-products become suspect.
This project is designed as exploratory study to investigate a number of techniques for improving accuracy of bacterial counts in high-fat rendered animal co-products.