Hygiena Stick Sponge Sampling Sponge

The Stick Sponge is the same sampling sponge as the bagged version, mounted on a handle. That one change is what makes it usable in the places environmental monitoring most needs to reach.

What the handle is for

Drains. The underside of a conveyor. Inside a hopper, a chute, a hollow roller, the gap behind a frame. These are exactly the harbourage sites where Listeria establishes itself, and they are exactly the places a hand cannot reach — or should not, because reaching in means putting a gloved hand into the very niche you are trying to prove is dirty.

A handle also keeps the sampler's own skin flora out of the sample, and keeps the sampler out of a machine that may not be fully isolated.

Choosing the broth

Buffered peptone water for general recovery and Salmonella pre-enrichment. Letheen or D/E neutralising broth wherever the surface has been sanitised, so that residual disinfectant does not keep killing organisms inside the bag on the way to the laboratory.

Using it

Work the sponge into the site rather than wiping past it — a drain is sampled by swabbing the wall and the lip, not the water. Break or fold the handle into the bag as instructed, seal it, and keep the sample cool.

Sample the hardest places to clean, not the easiest ones to reach. A monitoring programme that only samples open stainless steel proves the parts of the plant that were never the problem.