Suitability of rapid detection methods for salmonella in poultry slaughterhouses

Abstract

In the perspective of an announced prohibition to bring Salmonella-contaminated fresh poultry meat on the retail market as of December 2010, requirements are postulated for rapid methods for detection of Salmonella in poultry meat. These rapid methods should deliver reliable results in time to make it possible to steer the finished products in poultry slaughterhouses into the direction of the fresh poultry market or into the direction of industrial treatment. The most important requirements are the detection limit (1 cfu/25 g), the time of analysis (within hours up to a maximum of 24 h), the sensitivity and specificity, and the validation of the rapid detection method. To determine a requirement for the number of samples to be analyzed per unit of time of the detection methods, a sampling plan for pooling of samples is suggested. Information of commercially available detection methods from literature and data provided by the suppliers was compared to the postulated requirements. The results showed that none of the commercially available detection methods meet all the suggested requirements. For all available methods, the time of analysis is too long to steer the production process in time. This implicates that faster methods should be developed before the announced prohibition can be sensibly introduced. Also, information about sensitivity and specificity, which is essential for the reliability of the rapid test method, should be examined in a more uniform way.