The importance of swabbing layer facilities according to the housing system used was discussed by Gerardo Ramirez, PhD, U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the 2022 Virtual Shell Egg Academy.
Environmentally testing, or swabbing, layer houses is necessary when identifying the presence of Salmonella enteritidis (SE) in a bird’s environment and is a requirement of the Food and Drug Administration’s Egg Safety Rule.
Additionally, swabbing layer houses affords egg producers the opportunity to evaluate their SE prevention plans and prove they are successfully working for the housing layout.
“If everything is working as it should, your environmental samples should be negative. If you have test results coming back from your environment that are positive, then something is not working quite like it should and you need to modify the prevention plan,” explained Ramirez.
Not all houses are equal
High-rise styles, cage free, organic, belted houses and other production systems should all have a specific and unique sampling method. Thorough sampling throughout a house’s layout is key to potentially preventing an SE outbreak in a flock.
“The sampling plan that you have for your facility has to be appropriate for the poultry house layout,” he said.
A rectangular 300,000 bird poultry house shaped as a rectangle should not be swabbed only in one corner. “That is not a proper sample because it only tells me what is happening in that particular corner, not in the whole environment,” Ramirez explained.
He continued that high-rise houses, for example, typically house birds on the top level and store manure on the bottom level.
“To sample a high-rise house, a gauze pad should be attached to a string and dragged back and forth to ensure the entire length of the house is tested,” he added. “Houses that utilize belts to transfer manure out should be swabbed by taking a gauze pad and sampling those areas where the manure scraper meets the belt.”
