DETERMINING THE PREVALENCE OF SALMONELLA

Experiment one’s objective was determining prevalence of Salmonella in small ruminants, their carcass and products. Experiment two’s objective was to validate a commercial PCR system for Salmonella detection in fecal and hide samples. Goat and lamb carcass swabs were collected pre-evisceration (n=66), post-evisceration (n=70) and post-intervention (n=70). Hide swabs (n=103) and fecal samples (n=102) were aseptically retrieved. Samples were analyzed for Salmonella using Chi-square and McNemar’s statistics were performed using SAS. Salmonella was found in 22.55% of fecal, 17.48% of hide, 7.81% of pre-evisceration, 5.71% of post-evisceration, 1.43% of post-intervention and 18.18% of products. Results show real-time PCR systems are reliable detection methods for fecal and hide samples. Analysis of concordance showed substantial agreement beyond chance between the two methods when analyzing fecal samples (Kappa=0.65). Almost perfect agreement beyond chance between the two methods was detected when analyzing hide samples (Kappa=0.84).