A salmonella specialist has issued a warning to the international poultry industry against complacency in the face of changing salmonella organisms.
Dr. Daniel Windhorst, global key account manager for IDT Biologika, said the recent multi-state outbreak of salmonella from a Polish packing station underlines the need for continual vigilance about salmonella control.
“The salmonella found in this recent outbreak was Salmonella enteriditis phage type 8, one of the newly-emerging strains. The ‘usual’ culprit in such outbreaks, phage type 4, is decreasing as other serotypes are increasingly involved in human foodborne disease,” he commented. “Salmonella enteritidis is an organism that adapts with time.”
The EFSA/ECDC (European Food Safety Authority/European Center for Disease Prevention and Control) summary report—on trends and sources of zoonoses, zoonotic agents and food-borne outbreaks—published in 2015 showed how effective the on-going EU salmonella control measures had been in bringing down the weight of infection from the previously high levels in the 1980s.
“Poland today has less than two per cent of its flocks testing positive for either Salmonella enteritidis or typhimurium, according to the report. However, due to today’s rapid transport of products across Europe, one egg-packing plant can quickly affect people in seven different countries,” he added.
