Clear Safety

Clear Safety™ is a next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based food safety testing platform developed by Clear Labs, designed for food manufacturers, contract service labs, and in-plant operations that require more than a simple presence/absence result. Unlike conventional PCR, culturing, and antigen-based tests, Clear Safety™ delivers deep molecular characterization of pathogens — including Listeria and Salmonella — enabling teams to make faster, more informed decisions to protect product integrity and reduce operational risk.

Clear Safety™ combines robotic automation, superior accuracy, and environmental mapping into a single integrated platform. It is purpose-built to replace legacy detection methods with a solution that reduces false positives and negatives, shortens turnaround times, and provides actionable intelligence through AI and machine learning-driven insights.

Tunable Pathogen Characterization

• Offers flexible levels of molecular detail — users can choose to drill down to serotypes, strains, or whole genome sequences depending on the specific application need.
• Persistence Monitoring: Uses Similarity Analysis™ to distinguish resident from transient Listeria contamination within in-plant operations.
• Traceback Analysis: Whole genome sequencing integration enables identification of contamination sources and suppliers.
• Serotyping: Delivers serotyping results at a fraction of the cost and with significantly faster turnaround compared to traditional methods.

Automation and Reproducibility

• Robotic pipetting automates the workflow end-to-end, reducing hands-on time, minimising technician error, and eliminating variability between runs.
• Automation guarantees reproducibility across testing batches, making results more reliable and consistent for routine environmental monitoring programs.

Superior Accuracy

• Achieves greater than 99.9% accuracy for genus-level screening, significantly outperforming even the best PCR detection kits available on the market.
• Dramatically reduces rates of false negatives and false positives, lowering recall risks, operational costs, holding times, and short-shipping penalties.
• Enables labs to stop chasing false positive results and resume product shipment with confidence.
• Contract service labs using Clear Safety™'s serotyping feature no longer need to wait days to confirm whether a positive result is a true customer positive or an internal control strain.

Fast Turnaround Times

• Salmonella serotype information is available within 24 hours, enabling rapid corrective action.
• Listeria results, including screening results and persistence monitoring information with mapping visualisation, are delivered within 36 hours — a process that takes several days using legacy technology.
• Allows teams to react on a presumptive positive with greater than 99.9% accuracy, eliminating unnecessary inventory hold time.

Environmental Mapping

• Provides visual representation of environmental test results to help teams better understand contamination incidents and take more informed corrective actions.
• Users can upload facility floor plans and designate sample sites for routine environmental testing programs.
• Test results are displayed on an interactive map, allowing plant managers to assess contamination status at a glance.
• Historical data tracking enables users to determine which pathogen subtypes have previously appeared in their facility and monitor the movement of specific subtypes over time.

Clear Safety™ vs. PCR Legacy Methods

• Accuracy: PCR methods carry higher rates of false positives and negatives; Clear Safety™ delivers greater than 99.9% accuracy at the genus level.
• Pathogen Profiling: PCR-based speciation and serotyping is expensive and slow; Clear Safety™ provides faster and more cost-effective speciation, serotyping, and strain identification.
• Automation: PCR workflows are labour-intensive and error-prone; Clear Safety™ uses robotics to reduce both labour and errors.
• Environmental Contamination: PCR does not include environmental mapping; Clear Safety™ provides resident/transient contamination analysis.
• Insights: PCR delivers binary yes/no answers; Clear Safety™ leverages AI and machine learning to provide trends, environmental maps, and predictive risk assessments.

Clear Safety™ holds AOAC certification for both Salmonella and Listeria detection, and supporting technical resources — including method comparison white papers and product briefs on Salmonella serotyping — are available from Clear Labs. The platform is validated for use in food safety laboratories seeking to modernise their environmental monitoring and pathogen detection programs with next-generation sequencing technology.