BS EN ISO 11133:2014+A2:2020

What is ISO 11133 about?

ISO 11133 discusses microbiology of food, animal feed and water. ISO 11133 defines terminologies related to quality assurance of culture media and specifies the requirements for the preparation of culture media intended for the microbiological analysis of food, animal feed, and samples from the food or feed production environment as well as all kinds of water intended for consumption or used in food production.

ISO 11133 sets criteria and describes methods for the performance testing of culture media. ISO 11133 applies to end-users of ready-to-use media and producers such as:

• Commercial bodies producing and/or distributing ready-to-use or semi-finished reconstituted or dehydrated media,
• Non-commercial bodies supplying media to third parties
• Microbiological laboratories preparing culture media for their use

Who is ISO 11133 for?

ISO 11133 on microbiological analysis of food, animal feed, and water is useful for:

• Microbiological laboratories
• Microbiological research scientists
• Microbiologists
• Cultural anthropologists

Why should you use ISO 11133?

Culture media are used in all traditional microbiological culture techniques and also for many alternative techniques. Many formulae of culture media are commercially available and many more, designed for specific growth purposes, are described in the literature.

Many tests and procedures depend upon culture media being capable of providing consistent and reproducible results. The requirements for media may be specific to both the sample and the organisms to be detected. Culture media meeting established performance criteria are therefore a pre-requisite for any reliable microbiological work. Sufficient testing should be carried out to demonstrate

• The acceptability of each batch of medium
• That the medium is "fit for purpose"
• That the medium can produce consistent results

ISO 11133 helps users by providing the requirements for preparation, production, storage, and performance testing of cultural media to improve culture media quality.

Test methods specified by ISO 11133 helps users to determine the performance characteristics of cultural media.

ISO 11133 provides methods of measuring acceptance criteria that help microbiological laboratories to evaluate the productive, selective, and/or elective properties of a culture medium.

Overall, ISO 11133 guides you on the production, storage, and testing of culture media for any new producer to get all the information from the very beginning to the very finish and helps you gain a better understanding of the process.

What’s changed since the last update?

BS EN ISO 11133:2014+A2:2020 supersedes ISO/TS 11133‑1:2009 and ISO/TS 11133‑2:2003 and includes some technical changes:

• In Annex E, some of the terms were added deleted, replaced in selective media for the enumeration of microorganisms, selective enrichment media, non-selective liquid media, non-selective isolation media, multipurpose media, reference media for enumeration of microorganisms
• In Annex F, some of the terms were added deleted, replaced in selective media for enumeration of microorganisms by comparing with a non-selective reference medium, selective media for enumeration of microorganisms by comparing with a previously accepted, selective enrichment media, non-selective liquid media