Is Salmonella breaking the rules? A take from IPPE
Published:October 25, 2021
Summary
A sneaky microorganism capable of creating nightmares to the poultry industry is here to stay but is it really taking over? It is amazing to see how many available options are in the market for Salmonella control. During the last IPPE Expo, I had an opportunity to chat with various nutritional and biological products suppliers and learn from them how an integrated control strategy is required fo...
Excellent your questioning and reflection. Without monitoring and data analysis, the industry will hardly achieve its goals, whatever the disease. The result is that, for not being able to reach satisfactory levels of contamination by salmonella in their production, many veterinarians still use - systematically - chemical and antimicrobial products, in the raw material, feed and water, aggressive to the animals, to the environment, without thinking at all about the risks for the final consumer.
Paulo Martins, thank you for your comment, an intensive Salmonella monitoring that includes at the minimum the detection and serotyping is certainly important to understand what type of Salmonella is persisting in poultry environments. We should be more proactive in that sense and not just wait for a regulation to exist to start acting. Governments should promote this as well and reward those companies who make the effort to detect, identify and characterize the pathogen to look for better control interventions.
Dr Roxane Sanchez-Ingunza thank you for your thoughts. You wrote - A system that allows the veterinarian to gather relevant information from the field and analyze it in a timely manner would benefit any poultry producer.
Surveillance would definitely benefit the industry and the consumer but not necessarily the individual producer. Producer's benefits would depend on the regulatory framework and the actions taken following the detection of some Salmonella serovars, as well as the availability of financial support /compensation schemes for affected farms in cases where depopulation of flocks is required by the authorities. In the absence of such schemes individual producers may find it extremely difficult to resume their operations.
