Salmonella importance and current status of detection and surveillance methods

Salmonella, a genus within Enterobacteriaceae, remains as an important human pathogen and it has been reported to be the most common food‐borne bacterial disease in the world. Although majority of the Salmonella cases are sporadic, outbreaks occur frequently. Salmonella can be associated with many kinds of foods and the presence of Salmonella in ready‐to‐eat foods is considered significant regardless of the level of the contamination. Therefore isolation is carried out by enrichment culture of a defined weight or volume of the food (normally 25 g). The traditional and time‐consuming detection and isolation of Salmonella spp. from food and feed utilizes a multistep protocol with nonselective pre‐enrichment, followed by a selective enrichment step, isolation on selective agar media and a preliminary biochemical and serological confirmation. Several rapid methods have been developed to speed up the detection of Salmonella. This paper aims to give an overview of the occurrence and current status of Salmonella detection and surveillance methods.