This International Standard provides the general terminology related to quality assurance and specifies the requirements for the preparation of culture media to be used for the microbiological analysis of products intended for human consumption or animal feeding and samples from the food production environment as well as all kinds of water. These requirements are applicable to four categories of culture media used in laboratories that prepare and/or use culture media for performing microbiological analyses: - commercially manufactured ready-to-use media ; - commercially manufactured media to be remelted, supplemented and distributed; - media prepared from commercially available dehydrated formulations ; - media prepared from their individual components. This International Standard also sets criteria and describes methods for the performance testing of culture media. This International Standard applies to: - commercial bodies producing and/or distributing ready-to-use or semi-finished reconstituted or dehydrated media; - non-commercial bodies supplying media to third parties; - microbiological laboratories preparing culture media for their own use.