Probiotics: Live organisms as feed supplements to fight Salmonella in chickens.

New probiotic strains are tested
Here's a new way to reduce Salmonella in poultry before they go to the processing plant: Use probiotics instead of antibiotics for treatment of the birds. It's been a complex path getting to this point, and the procedure still raises some other issues to be considered. Still, the development offers a way that makes it easy on poultry growers and enhances food safety. It's a matter of incorporating the probiotic into either the water or the feed for the poultry, explained Billy Hargis, director of the Poultry Health Research Laboratory at the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture. Results from experiments show that administration of the probiotic can reduce Salmonella in either meat-type chicken houses or turkey houses before being transported to the processing plant and reduce the risk of cross contamination among turkeys at the plant. "It's not a chemical. It's not a drug," explained Hargis, who has pursued the research for the Food Safety Consortium. "These (probiotics) are live organisms." The term for the probiotic developed in Hargis' lab is FM-B11, also known as a defined lactic acid bacterial culture. Defined cultures eliminate the risk of pathogenic organisms existing within the culture, clearing the way for their effective use in stopping Salmonella in commercial poultry. "Another advantage is that we're talking about organisms that can be produced very cheaply, which keeps the costs of these treatments very low," Hargis said. That's partly because the defined cultures from which the probiotics come are tolerant of oxygen, avoiding the high cost of fermenting undefined cultures that can't grow in the presence of oxygen. Probiotics enter the picture as live organisms that serve as microbial feed supplements for animals to improve their intestinal microbial balance. Hargis' research group has taken the lactobacillus probiotic, a form of milk bacteria found in the bird, and added it to poultry water or feed. More recent efforts are directed toward beneficial bacteria from a totally different genus called Bacillus. During the last year, a substantial laboratory effort has been directed toward identification of organisms of this genus that are harmless to the animals or humans, which inhibit certain pathogenic organisms, and which can produce spores that are resistant to heating or storage. The important part of these new efforts is to develop effective probiotics that can be added to feed, which greatly reduces costs associated with delivery in the drinking water at the farm.
Source: University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture
Aporte: Guillermo Figueroa