Adapting Molecular Food Safety Tests to Alternative Matrices

Project Summary/AbstractMonitoring for pathogens causing enteric diseases such as salmonellosis is needed in a numberof sectors including food and feed production, retail facilities, and veterinary hospitals. Severalcommercially available kits are available for this purpose, but are validated primarily for humanfood testing. A comprehensive monitoring plan for food production facilities should include theability to test multiple types of samples, including tissues and feces from sick or dead animalsand/or rodents and environmental swabs. Validation of rapid assays for additional sample typessuch as animal tissues, fecal samples, and environmental swabs is urgently needed as part ofcomprehensive surveillance efforts and outbreak management plans.There is a large demand for rapid screening for enteric bacterial pathogens such as Salmonellaspp. in a number of sectors including food and feed production facilities. Several commerciallyavailable kits are available for this purpose, but are AOAC validated only for human food testing.Validation of rapid assays for additional matrices such as animal tissues, fecal samples, andenvironmental surface swabs is urgently needed. In order to accomplish this, we propose thefollowing specific aims: 1) Validate commercially available molecular diagnostic assays forSalmonella spp., E. coli, and Listeria spp. for use in fecal samples, animal tissues, andenvironmental swabs; 2) Transfer these assays to an open array platform in order to facilitatetesting efficiency and transferability to other laboratories.Extending validations of rapid food testing kits for additional animal-related matrices, which isfeasible due to our expertise in veterinary diagnostics, will have direct relevance to public healthby providing new methods for comprehensive enteric pathogen surveillance and outbreakmanagement. The long-term goal of the proposed research is to facilitate the dissemination ofhigh-throughput, cost-effective methods for screening of multiple sample types for a broadrange of enteric pathogens.