Full-scale industrial phage trial targeting Salmonella on pork carcasses

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

Phages have been suggested as promising biocontrol agents in food, but trials demonstrating the efficiency of phage treatment under industrial settings are missing. Here we performed a full-scale industrial trial to evaluate the efficacy of a commercial phage product to reduce the prevalence of naturally occurring Salmonella on pork carcasses. A total of 134 carcasses from potentially Salmonella positive finisher herds were chosen to be tested at the slaughterhouse based on the level of antibodies in the blood. During five consecutive runs, carcasses were directed into a cabin spraying phages, resulting in a dosage of approximately 2 × 107 phages per cm2 carcass surface. To evaluate the presence of Salmonella, a predefined area of one half of the carcass was swabbed before phage application and the other half 15 min after. A total of 268 samples were analysed by Real-Time PCR. Under these optimized test conditions, 14 carcasses were found positive before phage application, while only 3 carcasses were positive after. This work shows that phage application allows to achieve approximatively 79% reduction of Salmonella-positive carcasses and demonstrates that implementation of phage application in industrial settings can be used as an additional strategy to control foodborne pathogens.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer104240
TidsskriftFood Microbiology
Vol/bind112
ISSN0740-0020
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a grant from the Danish AgriFish Agency under the of Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries (GUDP grant no. 34009-14-0873).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd

ID: 340114020