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ARS Home » Plains Area » College Station, Texas » Southern Plains Agricultural Research Center » Food and Feed Safety Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #366348
Research Project: Identification of the Ecological Niches and Development of Intervention Strategies to Reduce Pathogenic Foodborne Pathogens in Poultry

Location: Food and Feed Safety Research

Title: The future of monitoring poultry processing microbiology: A requirement for the future, best practices and avenues for success

Author
item Feye, Kristina
item THOMPSON, D - University Of Arkansas
item Rothrock, Michael
item Kogut, Michael - Mike
item RICKE, STEVEN - University Of Arkansas

Submitted to: Poultry Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/20/2019
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: The review details necessary technological advancements the poultry industry must make to meet the demands of increased line production and food safety. We discuss how current methods will have to change for food safety monitoring, including the use of microbiome sequencing and high-powered computer algorithms and risk assessment. In doing so, we have the potential to make food safer and allow the poultry industry to make real-time decisions that will be less costly and time consuming.

Technical Abstract: Chicken is one of the most popular food animals on the planet, but poultry meat is a reservoir for foodborne pathogens that lead to significant morbidity and mortality world-wide. As a result, the poultry industry is required to safeguard the public from potentially deadly pathogens during multiple stages of the slaughter process. Unfortunately, the methods currently used by the poultry industry are not fast, relying on microbiological plate methods and limited detection systems that ultimately do not provide the total risk associated with foodborne disease. In addition to lacking sensitivity and specificity, the current methods employed by the industry are time sinks, taking upwards of 12 to 24 hours to generate data, which reduces the ability of the laboratories to enable real-time management decisions meant to safeguard the food supply. Mounting pressure to increase line-speeds will ultimately compromise current monitoring strategies and further exacerbate the ability to meet line-speed and processing demands. New innovations in detection methods must occur to mitigate the risk of foodborne pathogen related deaths that could result from more rapid slaughter and processing speeds. Part of the solution lies with comprehensive analyses of potential nonpathogen microbial populations that could serve as candidate indicator microorganisms, thus providing a means to generate more informative routine microbial monitoring. The application of microbiome mapping during all steps of poultry processing offers the type of monitoring that simultaneously addresses both risk reduction and optimization of antimicrobial selection.