Modeling Salmonella Spread in Broiler Production: Identifying Determinants and Control Strategies

The presence of Salmonella spp. in broiler production is a food safety concern as the bacterium can be transmitted to humans via contaminated meat and derived products. Salmonella detection in litter at the pre-slaughter period has been linked to increased odds of contaminated broiler carcasses and...

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Published inFrontiers in veterinary science Vol. 7; p. 564
Main Authors Machado Junior, Pedro Celso, Chung, Chanjin, Hagerman, Amy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Frontiers Media S.A 25.08.2020
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Summary:The presence of Salmonella spp. in broiler production is a food safety concern as the bacterium can be transmitted to humans via contaminated meat and derived products. Salmonella detection in litter at the pre-slaughter period has been linked to increased odds of contaminated broiler carcasses and meat derived products. To determine risk factors related to farm and broiler house characteristics and management practices, this study uses a unique longitudinal data set from a Brazilian integrated broiler enterprise, which contains official results of Salmonella spp. isolation from drag swabs collected at the end of the grow-out period. A Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal model found significant spatial and time influence on the odds of isolating Salmonella spp. from litter as well as significant effects from the size of a broiler house, total housing area per farm, type of broiler house, and number of litter recycles. Results indicate that recycling litter beyond 6 rearing cycles significantly increased the odds of isolating Salmonella before slaughter, and the bacterium was more likely to persist in conventional broiler houses, compared to broiler houses with controlled environment. Evidence of a potential principal-agent problem was also found in setting strategies to control the bacterium from litter, which suggests strong incentives to adopt the strategies aiming to reduce prevalence of the bacterium in the integrated enterprise. Our findings could be used to develop alternative measures to reduce the risk of persistence of the bacterium in the broiler production chain.
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Reviewed by: Jarkko Niemi, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Finland; Beate Pinior, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria
Edited by: Didier Raboisson, Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse, France
This article was submitted to Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science
ISSN:2297-1769
2297-1769
DOI:10.3389/fvets.2020.00564