Detection of Salmonella spp. Presence in Food

Abstract

The analysis of food products for presence of pathogenic microorganisms is one of the basic steps to control safety and quality of food. Development of new, fast, and reliable identification methods for biological threats are necessary to meet the safety standards of food products and risk management. Salmonella spp., a marker of food products safety, is widely distributed foodborne pathogen. The standard culture methods to detect the presence of microorganisms in food products are well developed; although these methods require 4 to 5 days to obtain presumptive positive or negative results. These tests are time-consuming and can take up to 7 days depending on the realization of biochemical and serological confirmations. In addition, sensitivity of cultures can be affected by antibiotic treatment, inadequate sampling, and a small number of viable microorganisms in samples. Standardized classical culture methods are still in use by many labs, especially by regulatory agencies, because they are harmonized methods, looked at as the “gold standards” in food diagnostics and thus overall well accepted. These are important aspects in international trade and compliance testing. A serious drawback is that, although they demand no expensive infrastructure and are rather cheap in consumables, they are laborious to perform, demand large volumes usage of liquid and solid media and reagents, and encompass timeconsuming procedures both in operation and data collection. As an alternative to time-consuming culture methods, several approaches have been developed to accelerate detection of pathogenic microorganisms in food products. In the present work, besides the standard method of Salmonella spp. detection in food products (ISO 6579:2003) some alternative detection methods have been presented.