SURVEILLANCE ON SALMONELLA IN TURKEY FLOCKS AND PROCESSING PLANTS

The present investigation was carried out to investigate the occurrenc e and distribution of Salmonella infection on all stages of turkey pro duction. Therefore, samples from turkey parent flocks, hatchery, meat turkey flocks, turkey feed and finally from the surveillanced flocks a t different steps in processing plant were examined. Salmonella was is olated from 4 out of 6 turkey parent flocks (66.7%), but none of the e xamined 485 samples from the hatchery revealed positive Salmonella res ults. Eight out of 24 monitored meat turkey flocks were free from Salm onella during the entire rearing period (33.3%); seven flocks (29.2%) appeared to be infected with only one serovar and in another 9 flocks (37.5%) two or more different serovars were isolated during the rearin g period, in some cases at the same time. In 20 out of 506 examined fe ed samples Salmonella was isolated (3.95%). During processing, bacteri ological investigations on the presence of Salmonella were carried out on the monitored flocks at different processing steps. Cross contamin ation seems to be very common during processing and even in several fl ocks contamination appeared to have started already during transport.