Prevalence and Characterization of Salmonella in Animal Meals Collected from Rendering Operations

As part of the Salmonella Education Reduction Program, the Animal Protein Producers Industry initiated a yearlong microbiological survey of animal meals from 1 January to 31 December 2010. The types of animal meals included poultry meal, pork and beef crax, meat meal, meat and bone meal, feather meal, blood meal, and fish meal from a variety of rendering operations (n = 65). Salmonella was positive in 731 (8.3%) of 8,783 analyzed samples, with contamination rates as 1.0, 33.2, and 21.3% from samples collected right after press, being loaded out, or unidentified, respectively. The randomly selected positive Salmonella samples (n = 100) representing 1.1% of the total samples tested were enumerated by the most-probable-number (MPN) method. The Salmonella contamination level ranged from <0.03 (below the detection limit) to 240 MPN/g with a median MPN per gram of 0.036. Among 102 Salmonella isolates from those 100 positive samples, a total of 42 Salmonella serotypes or groups were identified with Montevideo (13%), Senftenberg (11%), Mbandaka (7%), Orion (7%), Livingstone (6%), Tennessee (4%), Infantis (4%), Cerro (4%), and group Cl (4%) as the most predominant ones. Those Salmonella isolates were further analyzed for antimicrobial resistance to the 15 most common antibiotics by using the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System gram-negative plate. Most Salmonella isolates (n = 94) were sensitive to all antibiotics tested, with seven isolates resistant to one antibiotic and one resistant to seven antibiotics. Clearly, the prevalence of Salmonella in animal meals declined compared with previous surveys, and none of the Salmonella serotypes concerning target animal health were isolated. In addition, most Salmonella isolates remained susceptible to the majority of the 15 most commonly used antibiotics.