An Integrated Systems Approach to Reduce Salmonella in Organic and All Natural Poultry Handling

The proposed objectives are: 1) 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; 2) 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; 3) 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; and 4) to develop risk assessment models that can be adapted to organic and all natural production and processing systems. 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.