TABLE 1.

Scoring system for microbial methods used to prioritize records for the food materials C. botulinum database

Score	Description
1	Not adequately described
2	Can be clearly identified as unlikely to recover nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores, e.g., where the heat treatment included temperatures of ≥80°C; the use of such a heat treatment to inactivate competing vegetative bacteria is valuable for isolation of proteolytic C. botulinum spores but may inactivate nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores
3	Can recover most nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores but is suboptimal, e.g., incubation at 35–37°C, weak anaerobically, or trypsin was not used in the mouse test; optimum growth temp for nonproteolytic C. botulinum is 25–30°C, and that of proteolytic C. botulinum is 37°C; toxins of nonproteolytic C. botulinum may not exhibit maximum toxicity until they are activated by trypsin
4	Suitable for recovering nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores but is not fully quantified, e.g., the detection limit is not determined; if samples are positive, an MPN technique should be included to estimate the numbers present
5	Suitable for recovering and quantifying nonproteolytic C. botulinum spores and includes controls; to calculate the detection limit for each food material, parallel samples should be inoculated with spores from mixtures of nonproteolytic C. botulinum strains and subjected to the same procedure