Bureaucracy Hampers an E. coli Weapon

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coli, compared with just the one strain, called 0157, spotted by traditional culture tests using antibodies.

E. coli isn't the only menace GeneSystems can detect. In 1998, France was shaken up by an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, a virulent pneumonia caused by the obscure Legionella bacterium that can thrive in water systems. The government passed a law requiring regular testing of cooling towers in factories and public showers—giving rise to a market for Legionella testing that tops $160 million per year.

Retailers Not Waiting for Government

The Legionella culture test takes two weeks to produce results, but GeneSystems can spot the bug in just three hours. Despite the clear public-health advantage, the company has been fighting an uphill battle since 2000 to gain acceptance for its PCR-based tests. GeneSystems is lobbying the French government to amend its law, which mandates the use of Petri cultures, but can't estimate when that may happen.

In the meantime, approval could come sooner for wider use of GeneSystems' E. coli test. The company's technology has fared well in independent evaluations conducted by national laboratories around Europe, including the German National Reference Laboratory in Berlin. But PCR can't be used Europewide in place of cultures until the EU develops a "reference test," a draft of which already has been circulated, that covers the same five strains of E. coli that GeneSystems can detect. CEO Spurling says he expects a formal reference to be adopted in 2009, at which point the company's technology will have an official green light.

GeneSystems isn't twiddling its thumbs until that happens. "Fortunately supermarkets are not going to wait for government regulation to catch up," says founder Festoc. Although it's not the legal fault of retailers if they sell contaminated meat, they have the most to lose from food scares in terms of public confidence and brand impact. GeneSystems says it expects to sign up at least one major European supermarket chain as a customer in the coming weeks.

Schenker is a BusinessWeek correspondent in Paris.