A Comparison of the Fluorescent Antibody Method and a Standardized Cultural Method for the Detection of Salmonellas

Abstract

The results of routine use of the indirect fluorescent antibody (FA) technique using the Spicer‐Edwards H antisera set are reported for a range of agricultural and food samples. The FA technique was used on samples after the pre‐enrichment incubation period in the proposed ISO method for isolation of salmonellas. The numbers of FA false positive samples (ca. 5% overall) and FA false negative samples (ca. 1·3%) were low, but some originally FA false positive results were later shown to be false negative cultural results.

Enrichment cultivation in detection of food-borne Salmonella

“…The reports on the necessity for selective cultivation are controversial. Some detection methods allow the detection of Salmonella directly after cultivation in non-selective media Gibbs, Patterson, & Early, 1979;Löfström, Krause, Josefsen, Hansen, & Hoorfar, 2009;Matias et al, 2010;Tatavarthy et al, 2009). However, several case studies have shown that selective enrichment cultivation enhances the accuracy of molecular detection (Myint, Johnson, Tablante, & Heckert, 2006;Upadhyay et al, 2010).…”