What if my business used PCR testing?
August 30, 2023
What would that mean for your business? Would it even be useful? The answer to those questions depend on what your business is. For some, on the face of it, PCR testing could be completely irrelevant. An importer of cotton wouldn’t need PCR testing would they? But what if you could find out if the cotton was long fibre and was therefore going to last longer and be more durable. That would be a unique selling point …..
If you’re a business involved in the food & beverage sector then quantitative PCR testing can not only help your bottom line but it can give you answers to questions that your customers haven’t even thought to ask. What do I mean by that?
Imagine you’re a producer of dairy products – how do your customers know that your buffalo mozzarella is in fact buffalo mozzarella? You’ve had a PCR test done on your batch and it categorically confirmed the species that the mozzarella was made from. You could, if you wanted, even tell people it’s buffalo mozzarella from a rare species of buffalo living in a random location of Northern Italy if the unique, premium route was where you were positioning your mozzarella 😊
Or, you’re a producer of infant formula that is pure goat. Your customer is prepared to pay a premium as their child is allergic to cows milk but how to provide assurance to them? Well, I think you can see where we’re going here. The opportunities to provide your customer with information about what is in the product, or certainty of what the product is, exists with quantitative PCR.
From a bottom line perspective, PCR is also a useful tool. Say you’re in the wine and beverage industry where we’ve used PCR testing for customers for 15 years, question’s we’ve been able to answer are, “what is that wet sock smell in my wine?”, “why is my wine so fizzy”, and “something weird grew on a plate that we cultured and I’ve got no idea what it is?” Figuring out what sort of yeasts & bacterias that are present (and how much) has been hugely helpful to our customers. It’s meant that they could either deal with the problem by remediation or at worst, ditch the batch. Any which way, regular testing has always meant that customers never got to drink that “bad batch”, “the flat beer” or that “funky wine” helping to preserve the reputation of the brand. 🍷🍻
The answers that PCR can provide is really only limited by the scope of your imagination. It can be used as a tool to establish a unique selling proposition, to develop (and maintain) a brand reputation, to reduce wastage & to improve your product offering.
Long gone are the days when PCR testing was cost prohibitive to businesses. We even have customers setting up their own in-house testing but that’s a conversation for another day.
PS. If you were wondering what the answers were to those questions. The answers were: Brettonmyces, zygosaccharomyces & Alicyclobacilius (which causes spoilage in fruit drinks).
If you could use PCR in your business, what do you think your question would be? 🤔
