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- [00:10]
A
Hello everyone and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacey Atchison, publisher of Food Safety magazine, and I want to thank you for joining us for this special bonus episode. Today we bring you a conversation our editorial director and co host of Food Safety Matters, Erik Adrienne bloom, had with Dr. Savannah Applegate about the critical roles of diagnostics and testing in poultry food safety and disease management. But before we hear their discussion, I'd like to tell you a little bit about our guest. Dr. Savannah Applegate is a senior consultant at Elanco poultry food safety. Dr. Applegate received her Bachelor's degree in Meat Science from Ohio State University and her master's degree and PhD in applied food Microbiology from Texas Tech University. Her areas of expertise are meat and poultry food safety and she specializes in diagnostics and pathogen mitigation. And with that, let's hear their conversation.
- [01:11]
B
So when we look at diagnostics and the role of testing and making sure food is safe to eat, there's more than meets the eye to getting it right, as today's guest will explain. So welcome to the podcast, Savannah. It's great to have you here.
- [01:24]
C
Thanks. Happy to be here.
- [01:26]
B
So, you know, just to establish some fundamental details here, what role do diagnostics play in the poultry industry specifically and why are those diagnostics important for food safety and disease management?
- [01:38]
C
Yeah, thank you. And glad that you asked that. Diagnostics play a crucial role in food safety and disease management as they are part of the foundation of the poultry industry. Diagnostics help producers understand what is present in their samples, how widespread and through the use of tools like interventions and biosecurity, evaluate if those are working effectively. So from my time in diagnostics and with my food safety experience, diagnostics are especially important for managing USDA FSIS regulated pathogens like Salmonella. They allow us to understand if Salmonella is present in those samples and evaluate what type of of Salmonal it is through serotyping and the amount of bacteria. Through quantification. That information that we can get through diagnostics can help us understand the risk to consumers if we do not effectively reduce that Salmonella. This information helps us to reduce the risk of contamination before birds can reach the processing plant and assessing interventions and their efficacy and to ensure that the final product is safe and wholesome for consumers. When we think about disease management, routine diagnostic testing also supports long term disease management by providing routine data, trends and tracking and trending what that disease is doing. This data can help producers to evaluate their current programs like vaccine schedules or even pest control strategies and help them to be more effective over time. These insights from diagnostics can help operations become more proactive rather than reactive.
- [03:29]
B
Great. Well thanks for laying out that background and you know, especially with regarding what we're looking for with controlling regulated pathogens, you know, at the, at the, the farm level and the poultry plant level. So are there any common misconceptions or confusion in the industry regarding diagnostics and how to effectively implement them on Absolutely.
- [03:52]
C
So since on farm testing for poultry is not currently regulated by the USDA FSIS in regards to food safety, not all poultry companies have implemented an on farm surveillance program. But on farm testing can provide a snapshot of pathogens and other analytes that are housed on the outside of the bird, whether through feather rinses or even testing environmental samples to get an environmental factor of Salmonella through boot swabs, feet swabs, cloacal dust swabs, etc, and that information, those samples can be taken to the lab and tested for serotyping. Again, is Salmonella prevalent, is Salmonella positive in those samples, how much Salmonella is in that sample and what type of Salmonella is it? And then they can give that information to the processing facility and harvest order can be rearranged to ensure that birds with lower level of Salmonella can be processed first and then birds that have higher levels of Salmonella can be processed after so that the implant interventions are effective against that Salmonella and those pathogens that are coming in to ensure that a safe and wholesome product is is produced for those consumers. Oh great.
- [05:18]
B
Thanks for explaining some of the, you know, background on what is available to companies to be able to do with, you know, sampling, testing and, and what the diagnostics could show from that. So now for companies that are new to diagnostics, what are the key first steps in integrating effective testing protocols alongside their biosecurity programs?
- [05:39]
C
I would say the first step in integrating an effective testing protocol alongside biosecurity programs would be understanding what your normal looks like. What does your normal process look like, whether it's on farm or in plant, the data that is being collected, maybe it's pathogens, maybe it's indicator organisms. No matter what is being collected, map that out and see what is normal. Map it out over time and over your other facilities or other blocks or houses and figure out what your normal baseline is. And then using statistical process control that can help you determine outliers and where solutions can be implemented later on. Through the use of statistical process control, companies can understand what their baseline data is and figure out what their normal is. So through biosecurity or interventions applied, whether on farm or in plant, the company can understand if there's any deviations to their normal and what those outliers are. And if there are any outliers, a more targeted approach towards corrective actions can be implemented. So I would highly recommend that a company that is testing use some way to visualize their data, whether through a external platform so that they can visualize their data but also get real time updates so that if an outlier is to come up in the process, they can make real time decisions and corrective actions to reduce and correct that deviation. Okay, great.
- [07:27]
B
Well that's, that tells us, you know, a bit more about, you know, what you're looking at with the data you get and how that can be applied to intervention controls. And you know, kind of along those lines, can you maybe explain the importance of serotyping data versus quantification data when you're determining, for example the potential efficacy of Salmonella vaccines for poultry?
- [07:50]
C
Absolutely. So when we look at serotyping data versus quantitative data, they tell us two different things. So quantification is going to tell us how much Salmonella is in that sample versus serotyping data is going to tell us what type of Salmonella is in that sample. So it's when we're thinking about poultry vaccines, both are critical. If we were to talk more towards the Elanco's Megan Back live Salmonella typhemerium vaccine, we would want to understand both serotyping and quantification pre and post vaccination to show the effectiveness of that on farm intervention. So going back to our baseline prior to the intervention of vaccine, in this example, we would want to ensure that we have serotyping and quantification data to see what is in that sample, what, what's our normal. Prior to an intervention like vaccine being applied, we would evaluate to see if there are serotypes of concern for serogroups B and D that would be effective, that the vaccine would be effective against those. So that we know, hey, this intervention would likely work for this facility. So of course we have to take those samples prior to evaluating if an intervention would be effective. And then once we implement that intervention, we would also take those samples, the serotyping and quantification samples, to evaluate the effect effectiveness of that intervention. So we had our normal baseline prior. Now we're going to compare after that intervention is applied to see how much of a change we will have Post intervention, we know with a vaccine, a Salmonella typhoom vaccine that will likely give us cross protection against B and D sere groups, those are the typical bad Salmonella, if you will. So with diagnostic tools we should be able to see that shift from serotypes like Salmonella typhemerium or enteriditis that are very invasive in nature to something a little bit more mild like Salmonella Kentucky that is less invasive and can be easily taken care of by implant interventions like we've seen in, in literature and in real life data. So we also want to see not just on farm, yeah, we want to have that on farm reduction or we want to have that incoming load reduction. But when we think about USDA fsis, those regulatory samples and those companies, those companies are responsible for final product data. So whether it's a post chill parts or even ground data, the Salmonella that's in that sample. So if we can shift the Salmonella that is more from a more invasive Salmonella like Salmonella typhemerium or enteritis that we know is going to be inside of those birds in maybe the synovial fluid to shifting it more towards a Kentucky that might be more in the gut or on the microflora on the outside of the feathers. We know that those implant interventions, the chemical interventions are going to take care of that. But ultimately when we go to parts, when we open those birds up, we aren't going to have as much Salmonella that is on the inside of those birds as we would if we didn't have vaccine. So typically with a Salmonella typhemerium live vaccine, we see a reduction of Salmonella about 50% in parts because of that invasive and non invasive Salmonella and shifting the whole culture of Salmonella from a more invasive to less invasive and more mild to more of like a Kentucky.
- [11:59]
B
Interesting. Okay, thanks for those insights. And August, you know that leads me to ask you, how does Elanco support facilities in collecting and interpreting serotyping and quantification data that you just discussed to help improve food safety outcomes?
- [12:14]
C
Yeah, thanks for that question. Elanco definitely has a great program that's called a 60 day diagnostic plan. And even if a company doesn't have an established baseline, maybe they typically take indicator organism tests, or maybe they'll collect data just for Salmonella prevalence, but might not have the serotyping and quantification data to go along with that. Elanco would come in and evaluate what they're create a baseline for their serotyping and quantification of salmonella. And then after that baseline has been developed, we would evaluate that and see what interventions would be effective towards the issue that they're seeing. Maybe it's high levels of salmonella, maybe it's bnd, SEER groups. What is their con, what are their concerns and how can Elanco or another company address this concern? So we know that salmonella is vertically integrated. It's a vertical integration challenge. So working with companies taking samples at the breeders, hatcheries or broiler farms or even in plant and collecting that baseline to figure out what the problem is and how we can address it. So those samples will be shipped to our partner 3rd party lab and they will be again assessed for serotyping and quantification. And then we would evaluate if a solution is going to work for them and if so, then we would implement that intervention and then again do evaluations over time to ensure that that intervention is working effectively. And if it's not, or if things need to be tweaked, we can be able to do that in real time because we have data to back that up. And I think that's really important to be able to not only say, yes, this intervention's working, but show me the data. How well is it working?
- [14:22]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this whole discussion, you know, focusing on the, the importance of diagnostics, the data you get from that and how you can use that data to, you know, for example, for intervention controls like vaccines that we discussed, you know, very important and thanks to you, we know how Elanco can help companies to do that. So, Savannah, it's been wonderful having you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us for this very important discussion today.
- [14:50]
C
Thank you again and thanks for having me.
- [14:52]
A
Thanks again to Dr. Savannah Applegate for joining us on the podcast today and Elanco for sponsoring this episode. You can find more information about Elanco's free food safety products for poultry production and much more by visiting their website elanco.com youm can access links to their website in the show notes of your podcast player or the episode page on our website food-safety.com we hope that you enjoyed this special episode of Food Safety Matters and we'll talk to you soon.