Evaluation of Petrifilm method for enumerating aerobic bacteria in Crottin goat cheese.

The Petrifilm Aerobic Count Plate (ACP) developed by 3M laboratories, is a ready-to-use culture medium system, useful for the enumeration of aerobic bacteria in food. Petrifilm was compared with a standard method in several different food products with satisfactory results. However, many studies showed that bacterial counts in Petrifilm were significantly lower than those obtained with conventional methods in fermented food. The purpose of this study was to compare the Petrifilm method for enumerating aerobic bacteria with a conventional method (PCA) in Crottin goat's cheese. Thirty samples were used for the colony count. The mean count and standard deviation were 7.18 +/- 1.17 log CFU g(-1) on PCA and 7.11 +/- 1.05 log CFU g(-1) on Petrifilm. Analysis of variance revealed no significant differences between both methods (t = 1.33, P = 0.193). The Pearson correlation coefficient (0.971, P = 0.0001) indicated a strong linear relationship between the Petrifilm and the standard method. The results showed that Petrifilm is suitable and a convenient alternative to this standard method for the enumeration of aerobic flora in goat soft cheese.