Campylobacter Control Measures

Several projects aim to integrate WGS in routine surveillance and outbreak investigations, Dr. Llarena adds. “One of these, the European consortium INNUENDO, co-funded by the European Food Safety Authority, is aiming to deliver a standardized, cross-sectional framework for integration of bacterial WGS in routine surveillance and epidemiological investigations,” she says. “Existing frameworks are often developed by big labs with high capacity and lots of resources and competences. It is unsure if smaller EU-member states are able to utilize such novel methodologies due to limited information technology networks, knowledge, and funding. Therefore, INNUENDO aims to provide a ‘one size fits all’ framework suited to smaller countries to use in the investigation of foodborne C. jejuni outbreaks and routine surveillance.”

Windy City Symposium

Some 50 scientists representing academia, government, and industry from the U.S. and EU gathered in Chicago on Dec. 3, 2017, for the first National Campylobacter Symposium.

Supported by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), this landmark event featured the sharing of recent discoveries that will help reduce the burden of Campylobacter in commercial poultry production, according to Max Teplitski, PhD, NIFA’s national program leader in food safety and microbiology.

“The presentations contrasted U.S. and EU approaches to reducing the burden of Campylobacter in commercial poultry and regulatory tolerance thresholds,” Dr. Teplitski relates. “Much of the current U.S. industry efforts focus on the post-harvest reduction, while in EU, where sanitizers for carcasses are either entirely banned or severely restricted in use, most of the Campylobacter reduction efforts take place on the pre-harvest end of the production.”

Regulatory guidance for Campylobacter in the U.S. and EU are, perhaps, reflective of these different approaches, Dr. Teplitski notes. “While U.S. poultry producers aim to almost completely eliminate this pathogen from poultry products that reach consumers, often achieving up to 6 to 7 log reduction, the EU aims to maintain a threshold of less than 1,000 colony-forming units per gram of raw commercial product,” he elaborates.

Even though current commercial poultry production in the U.S. takes a HACCP-like view of Campylobacter control, work presented by NIFA-funded researchers highlighted forward-looking approaches for pre-harvest control of this pathogen, Dr. Teplitski says. “To zero in on the most effective on-farm interventions, scientists correlated 46 variables, representing aspects of commercial production practices, environmental conditions, etc., with prevalence of Campylobacter in commercial flocks,” he reports. “Controlling litter quality and moisture through inorganic chemical amendments was identified as a potentially effective intervention for reducing Campylobacter persistence. Much of the discussion focused on various vaccination strategies for controlling Campylobacter. Efficacy of the vaccination depended on the route of administration, target and the presence of microbiota.”