Assessing Salmonella prevalence and complexity through processing using different culture methods

Conventional Salmonella surveillance requires a week for isolation, confirmation, and subsequent serotyping. We previously showed that this could be reduced by 24 h by combining the pre-enrichment and enrichment steps into a single selective pre-enrichment step and was tested on directly after picking. The goal of this study was 2-fold: 1) to evaluate the use of selective pre-enrichment through each step of processing, including postintervention when the Salmonella load is reduced, and 2) to assess any changes in serovar populations in Salmonella positive samples. Duplicate carcass drip samples, each representative of 500 broiler carcasses, were collected by catching processing water drip under moving carcass shackle lines in each of three commercial broiler slaughter plants. Samples were collected post-pick, post-inside-outside bird wash (IOBW), and post-chill; duplicate wing rinses were performed pre- and post-antimicrobial parts dip. Each processing plant was sampled 6 times for a total of 180 samples collected. The number of Salmonella positives identified with selective pre-enrichment conditions (48/180) was similar to traditional selective enrichment culture conditions (52/180), showed good concordance in recovery rate between the 2 culture methods (Fisher's exact test, P = 0.72). We also found that the incidence of Salmonella reduced dramatically after antimicrobial intervention (post-pick 66.7% vs. post chill 8.3%). When serovar populations were evaluated in Salmonella positive samples using CRISPR-SeroSeq, we detected four different Salmonella serovars, Kentucky, Infantis, Schwarzengrund, and Typhimurium, and their incidence rose between post-pick and post-IOBW. The relative abundance of Infantis within individual samples increased between post-pick and post-IOBW while the relative abundance of the other 3 serovars decreased. These results suggest that a selective pre-enrichment step reduces the time required for Salmonella isolation without negatively affecting detection and serovar profiles in culture positive samples were not altered between culture conditions used.