The international poultry industry has been warned not to be complacent over dealing with changes which are occurring in relation to salmonella organisms.
An alert, issued by the Germany-based animal health company, IDT Biologika, highlighting a recent multi-state outbreak of salmonella from a Polish packing station, has underlined 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,” said the company’s global key account manager, Dr Daniel Windhorst, adding that Salmonella enteritidis is an organism that adapts with time.
“The ‘usual’ culprit in such outbreaks, phage type 4, is decreasing as other serotypes are increasingly involved in human food-borne disease.”
Although current EU data on the trends and sources of zoonoses, zoonotic agents and food-borne outbreaks shows how effective on-going EU salmonella control measures have been in reducing infection levels, IDT is still urging the poultry industry to stay on top of the issue.
“Poland today has less than 2% of its flocks testing positive for either Salmonella enteritidis or typhimurium,” said Dr Windhorst (pictured above). “Even so, due to the modern rapid transport of products across Europe, one egg-packing plant can quickly affect people in different countries.”
