Title
An appraisal of the use of meat-juice serology monitoring data for estimating prevalence of cecal salmonella carriage of pigs at slaughter by means of herd-level and animal-level simulation
Date Issued
01 January 2009
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
University College Dublin
Publisher(s)
IAMFES
Abstract
Some attempts have been made to elucidate the association between positive serology and Salmonella detection by bacterial culture in individual pigs and pig herds. This study aimed to appraise whether the existing knowledge on such association provides grounds for the utilization of serology monitoring data for predicting Salmonella subclinical infection of pigs entering the abattoir. Serology test results of pig carcasses (taken at abattoirs) originating from 436 representative active herds in Ireland were utilized to estimate the overall cecal Salmonella carriage of Irish slaughter pigs. To this effect, two separate simulations were conducted using (i) herd-level regression data and (ii) animal-level sensitivity (0.2890) and specificity (0.8895) data, which were extracted from published articles. The herd-level approach estimated a moderate prevalence of cecal Salmonella carriage of 0.222 (σ = 0.094; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.069 to 0.431), which matched closely the mean prevalence value from the surveys' validation data of Salmonella-positive cecal samples (n = 1,098) obtained at Irish abattoirs (0.215; 95% CI: 0.192 to 0.240). The animal-level simulation generated an output distribution with slightly more uncertainty (a = 0.102 and 95% CI: 0.146 to 0.537) and a higher estimate of cecal carriage (0.312), which was an effect of the low relative sensitivity of serology, common under field conditions. While the herd-level simulation appeared to be technically more appropriate, since its correlation is only moderate, further elucidation of other factors related to subclinical infection should be attained for their incorporation in prospective dynamic on-farm models, which would be useful in the ultimate goal of estimating the risk of carcass contamination during slaughter. Copyright © International Association for Food Protection.
Start page
286
End page
294
Volume
72
Issue
2
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencia veterinaria
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-60849111103
PubMed ID
Source
Journal of Food Protection
ISSN of the container
0362028X
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción CientÃfica
Scopus