Steve Ricke, director of Meat Science & Animal Biologics Discovery and professor of animal and dairy sciences, received USDA-NIFA funding for his project Bioengineering novel bacteriophages to target salmonella in poultry production through the Food Safety and Defense Program. It was among 12 projects sharing $14 million in funding.
Project summary (from NIFA database): Salmonella is a significant public health threat and economic concern as foodborne illness continues to be an overwhelming challenge in the U.S. While numerous intervention strategies are used in poultry processing to reduce Salmonella populations with some success, p live bird production remains a critical step for Salmonella control. Using 8 to 12 hour feed withdrawal (FW) before the broilers enter the processing plant to reduce fecal contamination appears to be a major factor to increases in Salmonella. Our research proposal represents an new way for Salmonella control with a targeted bioengineering design of a multiple phage population with an optimized Salmonella-killing impact that can be applied during FW to reduce most if not all Salmonella serovars and strains. Our general hypothesis is that bioengineering phages with different Salmonella attachment sites allow for their maximum and continuous exposure to target Salmonella preventing horizontal Salmonella transmission among birds during FW reducing Salmonella prevalence at the processing plant. Our specific objectives: Objective 1- Bioengineer bacteriophages for optimal efficacy against Salmonella serovars during FW. Objective 2 -Screen the resulting bioengineered phage candidates from Objective 1 against multiple Salmonella serovars using in vitro crop and cecal incubations. Objective 3- Determine the efficacy of Salmonella phage cocktail identified in Objective 2 supplemented in the drinking water of commercial broilers on reducing Salmonella transmission during FW and Salmonella load at the processing plant. The results from this research occur at a most opportune time for the meat and poultry industry as the industry is now considering bacteriophages as a potential approach for limiting pathogens. Moreover, the industry is desperate for viable options. Our collaborative approach conceptually represents a highly targeted strategy by bioengineering more efficacious phage for the poultry GIT and tailored for application during FW before poultry processing. In addition, our bioengineered phage approach represents a broad-spectrum intervention to most serovars both currently prevalent ones as well as emerging serovars. Poultry is only the beginning. Salmonella is also prevalent in swine, cattle, and nonmeat foods such as vegetables. With traditional interventions, Salmonella can be especially difficult to tackle in swine and cattle once they invade deep tissues where phage application could be practical. Finally, from more of a long-term standpoint, this approach opens the floodgates to tackle other pathogens which are also highly problematic for the poultry industry, such as Campylobacter, which resides in the chicken gut as part of the microbiome and is nearly impossible to target with antimicrobials.
Source : wisc.edu