A review of testing and assurance methods for Trichinella surveillance programs

Abstract

While global cases of trichinellosis have fallen since pork regulation began, the disease remains a danger to pork and animal game consumers as well as a liability to producers. Managing food safety risk and supporting agricultural trade requires cost-effective and sensitive diagnostic methods. Several means exist to inspect pork for parasitic infections. Here, we review literature concerning the sensitivity, specificity, and cost of these methods. We found that artificial digestion coupled with optical microscopy to be the best method for verification of Trichinella larva free pork due to its cost efficiency, high specificity, and reliability. Serological techniques such as ELISA are useful for epidemiological surveillance of swine. While current PCR techniques are quick and useful for diagnosing species-specific infections, they are not cost efficient for large-scale testing. However, as PCR techniques, including Lateral Flow- Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (LF-RPA), improve and continue to reduce cost, such methods may ultimately succeed artificial digestion.