A NOTE ON THE “MICROORGANISM CATALOG” FDA has clearly recommended establishment of a listing of common microorganisms found in the aseptic manufacturing environment. This expectation is laid out in section X.B. (8), as follows: “Characterization of recovered microorganisms provides vital information for the environmental monitoring program. Environmental isolates often correlate with the contaminants found in a media fill or product sterility testing failure, and the overall environmental picture provides valuable information for an investigation. Monitoring critical and immediately surrounding clean areas as well as personnel should include routine identification of microorganisms to the species (or, where appropriate, genus) level. In some cases, environmental trending data have revealed migration of microorganisms into the aseptic processing room from either uncontrolled or lesser controlled areas. Establishing an adequate program for differentiating microorganisms in the lesser-controlled environments, such as Class 100,000 (ISO 8), can often be instrumental in detecting such trends. At minimum, the program should require species (or, where appropriate, genus) identification of microorganisms in these ancillary environments at frequent intervals to establish a valid, current database of contaminants present in the facility during processing (and to demonstrate that cleaning and sanitization procedures continue to be effective).” The EM qualification study is an excellent opportunity to start this catalog and to generate information on the effectiveness of the cleaning and sanitization program from a microbiological perspective. Make sure that the EM qualification program includes relevant evaluations of all organisms isolated from air and surface samples, to the species level.