Tech Tip | Setting ATP Thresholds

Many times we receive questions and technical service from users of ATP environmental monitoring systems like AccuPoint® Next Generation as to how one would go about testing or evaluating setting thresholds for clean or dirty. And the truth is, it can be relatively simple or can be more complex depending upon your needs.

One of the things that that our teams at Neogen® have recognized over the years of working with ATP as a sanitation monitoring tool, is that not all segments of the food industry have the same needs, and not even all facilities have the same needs. There are some pieces of equipment that are very easy to clean, there are others that are more challenging. Some environments that will allow for the use of wet cleaning versus others that require dry cleaning for control of pathogens and other types of hazards.

With that comes the need for some flexibility in your sanitation monitoring program because you may not be able to drive down to certain levels of ATP in certain situations. But given that flexibility what you can do is utilize the default thresholds that are provided. In the case of Neogen, we use 300 and 150 to indicate our dirty and our warning levels.

You can go ahead and use those thresholds if you desire but then you can also implement various continuous improvement opportunities where you may be able to maybe start at a certain point and then drive down lower and lower as time goes on because you'll realize that you're honing in on and perfecting your sanitation program.

This being said, you have that freedom and flexibility to do that. The other thing it will do is it will give you that real-time metrics to be able to measure how people are doing and to be able to reward excellent behavior and maybe step in and correct problematic behavior before it becomes an issue that affects your product quality.

All that being said, that maximum level of flexibility to be able to alter those levels is really something that we'd like to put in your hands and give you some advice on how to go about doing it.