This monograph has been reviewed by members of the IUMS–ICFMH Working Party on Culture Media and given ‘Proposed’ status.

UVM (University of Vermont) medium was originally reported by Donnelly and Baigent (1986) as a modification of the listeria enrichment broth of Dominguez-Rodriguez et al. (1984). This medium was more recently modified to its present form (McClain and Lee, 1988) for use in the official U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) method for meats and poultry. The difference between UVM broths I and II is simply the inclusion of a higher concentration of acriflavine in the latter (McClain and Lee, 1988). Further work has shown the effectiveness of the substitution of UVM II with modified Fraser broth in the modified USDA-FSIS enrichment method (McClain and Lee, 1989; Warburton et al., 1991).