Aims:  While considerable foodborne pathogen research has been conducted on conventionally produced broilers and turkeys, few studies have focused on free‐range (organic) or pastured poultry. The current surveillance study was designed to isolate, identify and genetically characterize Salmonella from pastured poultry farm environment and from retail samples. Methods and Results:  In this study, 59 isolates were collected from two pastured poultry farms (n = 164; pens, feed, water and insect traps) and retail carcasses (n = 36) from a local natural foods store and a local processing plant. All isolates were serotyped and analysed phenotypically (antimicrobial resistance profiles) and genotypically (DNA fingerprints, plasmid profiles and integron analysis). Salmonella enterica was detected using standard microbiological methods. Salmonella Kentucky was the most prevalent serotype detected from the sampled sources (53%), followed by Salmonella Enteritidis (24%), Bareilly (10%), Mbandaka (7%), Montevideo (5%) or Newport (2%). All isolates were resistant to sulfisoxazole and novobiocin, and the majority (40/59) possessed class I integrons shown by PCR detection. Each Salmonella serotype elicited a distinct pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis fingerprint profile, and unique differences were observed among the serotypes. Conclusions:  The findings of this study show that Salmonella serotypes isolated from pasture‐raised poultry exhibit antimicrobial resistance and class I integrons. Significance and Impact of the Study:  This study demonstrates that despite the cessation of antibiotic usage in poultry production, antibiotic resistant Salmonella may still be recovered from the environment and poultry products.

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Escherichia coli O157 outbreaks were identified in Minnesota in February 2003 involving seven persons and in Colorado in July 2003 involving 13 persons. Case isolates from the two states had matching pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns. Independent case-control studies linked infections in each outbreak with eating alfalfa sprouts that were traced to the same seed distributor. The Colorado sprouter reportedly complied with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sprout guidance, whereas the Minnesota sprouter did not. These investigations revealed that increased compliance with existing FDA guidance is needed and that additional research is needed to improve the alfalfa seed decontamination process. This reaffirms the FDA recommendation that raw alfalfa sprouts should be considered potentially contaminated and avoided by persons at high-risk such as the elderly, young children, and immunocompromised persons. PFGE played an essential role in linking these two temporally and geographically distinct E. coli O157 outbreaks.

PulseNet USA is the national molecular subtyping network system for foodborne disease surveillance. Sixty-four public health and food regulatory laboratories participate in PulseNet USA and routinely perform pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli isolated from humans, food, water, and the environment on a real-time basis. Clusters of infection are detected in three ways within this system: through rapidly alerting the participants in the electronic communication forum, the PulseNet Web conference; through cluster analysis by the database administrators at the coordinating center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the patterns uploaded to the central server by the participants; and by matching profiles of strains from nonhuman sources with recent human uploads to the national server. The strengths, limitations, and scope for future improvements of PulseNet are discussed with examples from 2002. In that year, notices of 30 clusters of Shiga toxigenic E. coli O157 infections were posted on the Web conference, 26 of which represented local outbreaks, whereas four were multistate outbreaks. Another 27 clusters were detected by central cluster detection performed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of which five represented common source outbreaks confirmed after finding an isolate with the outbreak pattern in the implicated food. Ten food isolates submitted without suspicion of an association to human disease matched human isolates in the database, and an epidemiologic link to human cases was established for six of them.

Campylobacter is a leading cause of foodborne illness worldwide. It is common in poultry, and human infections are often associated with consumption of contaminated poultry products. One strategy to reduce Campylobacter colonization in poultry is the use of oral probiotics, but this produces variable results, possibly because the probiotics are destroyed in the stomach's acidic environment. Protection (e.g., encapsulation) of isolates may overcome this problem, but there is no assurance that these isolates will have efficacy in the lower gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, screening candidate isolates by directly placing them in the lower intestinal tract via cloacal inoculation may eliminate the time and expense of encapsulating ineffective isolates. Thus, the purpose of this study was to collect bacterial isolates with anti-Campylobacter activity in vitro and evaluate their efficacy in vivo upon either oral or intracloacal administration. Bacterial isolates were collected from healthy birds and were evaluated for efficacy against C. jejuni in vitro. Isolates having generally regarded as safe status and demonstrating in vitro anti-Campylobacter properties were evaluated after oral or intracloacal inoculation into chicks on day 1 (n = 10 birds per isolate per route of administration). On day 7, birds were dosed by oral gavage with a four-strain mixture of wild-type Campylobacter containing at least 1 × 10(7) CFU/ml organisms. On day 14, birds were euthanized and the ceca were collected aseptically for Campylobacter enumeration. When dosed orally, only one isolate had a 1-log reduction in cecal Campylobacter counts, whereas when administered intracloacally, six of these isolates produced a 1- to 3-log reduction in cecal Campylobacter counts in 14-day-old chickens. These results support the strategy of evaluating the efficacy of potential probiotic isolates via cloacal inoculation prior to undergoing the effort of encapsulating isolates for oral administration.