Salmonella intervention strategies and testing methods differ greatly between the U.S. and Europe-what are the implications?

Authors: RUSSELL, SCOTT - UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA; Cox Jr, Nelson; Richardson, Larry

Submitted to: WATT Poultry USA
Publication Type: Trade Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/22/2009
Publication Date: 4/1/2009
Citation: Russell, S.M., Cox Jr, N.A., Richardson, L.J. 2009. Salmonella intervention strategies and testing methods differ greatly between the U.S. and Europe-what are the implications?. Poultry USA. 20-21.

Interpretive Summary: In the United States and Europe have evolved different approaches for controlling Salmonella on raw poultry products. Additionally, the methods used to test poultry products for the presence of Salmonella vary greatly from nation to nation. The purpose of this article is to discuss the potential implications associated with these differences.

Technical Abstract: Salmonella intervention strategies and testing methods differ greatly between the U.S. and Europe. In the United States, companies are limited as to the types of interventions they may use to control Salmonella during the processes of breeding, hatching, and growout. The reasons for these limitations are many including: economic and environmental factors, regulatory agency restrictions, and the massive scale of production. In Europe there is an intense fear of using chemicals to eliminate Salmonella on chicken products. Consumers are much less accepting of the use of any chemical intervention during processing. As such, no chemicals are approved for use in poultry processing facilities in Europe. Therefore, a great deal of emphasis is placed on interventions during breeding, hatching, and growout. For example in Europe, some countries test all breeder flocks for Salmonella and, if a flock is found to be positive for Salmonella, the company destroys the entire breeder flock. Most studies show that, using this extreme measure, these countries have been able to significantly reduce Salmonella to only 3-6% on birds coming into the processing facility. The scale of production in the U.S. makes this approach absolutely impractical. Therefore, in the U.S., emphasis is concentrated on interventions at the processing plant. Numerous studies have evaluated different microbiological sampling plans and methods for recovery of organisms from poultry carcasses. However, difficulty arises when comparing prevalence data from country-to-country due to differences in processing steps, sampling plans and laboratory methodologies and the implications of these differences should be considered since today we are in a global economy.