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<OL> <LI>To conduct on-farm surveys in organic and all natural poultry production practices to determine the prevalence and diversity of Salmonella serovars in these production systems as compared to more intensive commercial systems; <LI>To develop and evaluate intervention strategies targeting control of Salmonella during the feed withdrawal and transportation processes prior to slaughter of broiler chickens to minimize cross contamination during transport and slaughter; <LI>To evaluate post-harvest interventions to control Salmonella using novel antimicrobials in pre- and post-chiller applications, for both water and air chilling, and for finished raw products; <LI>To develop risk assessment models that can be adapted to organic and all natural production and processing systems. </ol> The proposed research will generate multiple publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, presentations in meetings, and annual updates as well as a complete final report to the funding agency.
Approach: A minimum of 10 flocks from each production system will be sampled during grow-out. Chick box paper pads from each production system will be collected from a minimum of 10 boxes and will be sampled. Each flock will be sampled on at least 3 occasions and 6-10 of each sample type will be collected during each sampling occasion. Salmonella parameters will be evaluated on each sample collected: 1) isolation frequency; 2) serotype diversity; 3) antimicrobial resistance pattern; and 4) genotype diversity.