Water wash decreases the incidence of Campylobacter jejuni in broilers and the barn environment as well as disinfection, revealed research published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
“For Canadian producers, the reduced cost of disinfectants and the reduced labor requirement for stringent sanitation protocols between flocks will reduce production costs,” said study co-authors, Doug Korver, PhD, professor of Poultry Nutrition, and Ben Willing, PhD, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Microbiology of Nutrigenomics, both at the University of Alberta.
“The lack of an effect on broiler performance and mortality means the income side of the economic calculation should not change, or perhaps increase if birds are healthier.”
In addition, the reduction in a pathogen of concern for human illness is a benefit for consumers, they added.
Biosecurity measures
The poultry house cleanout process typically includes the removal of litter, washing and disinfection between each broiler flock as part of biosecurity protocols.
“Canadian broiler chicken producers have historically removed all litter and fully sanitized broiler barns in between cycles, on the assumption that a more stringent cleaning protocol will remove pathogens to a greater extent,” Korver and Willing explained.
“However, beneficial bacterial are also removed with greater efficacy. By leaving a greater number and more diverse population of bacteria by water-washing only, it might allow for a more rapid establishment of a stable gut microflora, which could reduce colonization by pathogens.”
Study results
For the study, the researchers monitored for the presence of C. jejuni and Salmonella in the large intestines of broilers over four production cycles. The broilers were raised in barns that were either water washed or fully disinfected between flocks.
“We are now exploring whether chemical disinfection has an impact on the development of antibiotic resistance. Using this same set of samples from the published paper we are looking at the collective genomic material of the microbial community to see whether disinfection results in increased antibiotic resistance genes,” Korver and Willing said.
