Summary: Seventy‐three comparative tests of dairy plant were made using swabs of ribbon gauze and calcium alginate wool, the latter being dissolved before plating in dilute sodium hexametaphosphate solution. The colony counts obtained with alginate swabs were in the great majority of cases much higher than those with gauze. When both types of swab were inoculated with known numbers of Bact. coli , the recovery was again much greater with alginate wool.