Probiotics to fight Salmonella in poultry

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.”

Lactobacillus
The term for the probiotic developed in Hargis’
lab is FM-B11, also known as a defined lactic acid bacterial culture. 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.

“We can add these to the feed even before pelleting,” Hargis
said. “The beneficial bacteria in the feed have tremendous advantages because
now we can talk about continuous administration over time. It makes it very
simple. It just comes in with the feed.”

Related folder:
Dossier AllAbout Probiotics

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