Through regularly testing complaint samples for the microbial count, a market surveillance can be performed, which can serve for controlling of all measures applied for reaching the microbiological safety of the cosmetic products. If counts which exceed given limits are detected, processes in development and production have to be checked and further chemical and microbiological testing has to be applied in course of the essential root cause analysis. A risk assessment must be performed and decisions for follow up-actions (corrections and corrective actions) have to be made, which must then be carefully implemented. In this way detected failures will lead to improvements of product and quality system. Such approach has a special importance for the valid application of the preservative efficacy test (PET) and its significance for the microbiological product safety. On the other hand, microbiological findings from the complaint samples which are in conformity with the given limit counts indicate the sufficient efficacy of system measures to reach the microbiological product safety.
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