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Phages have been suggested as promising biocontrol agents in food, but trials demonstrating the efficiency of phage treatment under industrial settings are missing. Here we performed a full-scale industrial trial to evaluate the efficacy of a commercial phage product to reduce the prevalence of naturally occurring Salmonella on pork carcasses. A total of 134 carcasses from potentially Salmonella-positive finisher herds were chosen to be tested at the slaughterhouse based on the level of antibodies in the blood. During five consecutive runs, carcasses were directed into a cabin spraying phages, resulting in a dosage of approximately 2 × 107 phages per cm2 carcass surface. To evaluate the presence of Salmonella, a predefined area of one half of the carcass was swabbed before phage application and the other half 15 min after. A total of 268 samples were analysed by Real-Time PCR.
Under these optimized test conditions, 14 carcasses were found positive before phage application, while only 3 carcasses were positive after.
This work shows that phage application allows to achieve approximatively 79% reduction of Salmonella-positive carcasses and demonstrates that implementation of phage application in industrial settings can be used as an additional strategy to control foodborne pathogens.
Volpi M, Gambino M, Kirkeby K, Elsser-Gravesen A, Brøndsted L. Full-scale industrial phage trial targeting Salmonella on pork carcasses. Food Microbiology. 2023; 112: 104240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fm.2023.104240.