8. Calculation of costs
Any emerging novel technique has to withstand a cost comparison
with traditional and well-established methods. Reasonable
cost-benefit ratios are required in times of growing budget constraints
and resource-poor facilities, especially in low-income
countries. For high-throughput analyses a minimization of the
costs per sample is desired. The actual costs per FISH sample consist
of the overall materials needed, including technical equipment, as
well as the labour costs, the required staff training and also the
initial expenditures for the establishment of a FISH assay. Since the
costs for implementation and training matters might exhibit a high
degree of variation, only the expenses for established protocols
shall be considered here. This is also the case for purchasing
commercially available FISH kits, which are usually relatively simple
to conduct, but much more expensive (Alexander et al., 2006).
However, it has to be kept in mind that, due to a general lack of
experience with FISH-testing in food microbiology, the implementation
costs of a novel FISH test might be considerably higher
than setting up a new PCR.