What is Coliform

 Coliforms are a group of bacteria commonly found in the environment, including soil, surface water, vegetation and the intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals. Detection of coliforms is used as a general indicator of sanitary conditions in dairy production and processing environments. It sort of reminds one of the canary in the mine or the food taster for the king…there’s an allowable level of bacteria…but it’s not necessarily bad bacteria…although it could be depending on what kind of coliform. Here’s John Anderson, a Laboratory Evaluation Officer for the USDA who tests all kinds of dairy products. “The main 3 are those escherischias or the e-coli’s, the clepsiellas and then the enterobacters so there’s like 3 different groups. So they’re all in what we call the coliform group. What we’re looking for in there is growth, a pink colony and a gas bubble around it.”

 At first take, this whole picture doesn’t seem pretty until Officer Anderson goes on to explain: “They help our digestion. They’re a normal ruminant, just a normal bacteria in your guts. Just about anybody you can think of is gonna have coliforms of some kind as well as a ton of other kinds of bacteria. It’s a big bad world inside your gut.”

 And by the way, we’re not picking on the dairy industry.  (Anderson) “Dairy is the most heavily regulated food out there.”