Drinking water deliverable mucoadhesive salmonella nanovaccine for broiler birds

Our goal of this projectis to provide an effective Salmonella mitigation strategy in birds by reducing the bacterial shedding and improve food safety.Salmonellosis is responsible for approximately 1.2 million foodborne illnesses, 23,000 hospitalizations, and 450 deaths in the United States each year. Food, including poultry-related products, is the cause for about 1 million of these illness. In the United States, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of USDA has issued stringent standards to minimize Salmonella contamination in poultry meat and released the Salmonella Action Plan (https://poultryhealthtoday.com/mobile/article/?id=6083). There are more than 2500 Salmonella serotypes present, and S. enterica serovar Enteritidis is the leading cause of human Salmonellosis worldwide. S. enterica infections do not cause severe symptoms in poultry; hence, identification of asymptomatic carriers is very difficult. Contamination with any of the Salmonella serotypes in the processed poultry meat is not acceptable by USDA standards. As per July 2019 Center for Disease Control report, five additional Salmonella serotypes have been added, with 768 reported new cases of Salmonella infection in 48 states with 122 hospitalizations and 2 deaths (one each from Ohio and Texas), attributed to backyard poultry from multiple hatcheries as the likely source of these outbreaks. Young birds are highly susceptible to Salmonella, and the short life-span of broilers (~7 weeks) used for meat purpose are at high risk of being infected by Salmonella and contaminate the food chain. This caught our interest to mitigate the problem of Salmonella in broiler birds.