View/Open - ARAN - National University of Ireland, Galway

Chapter 6
6. Discussion
The European Food Safety Authority recently reported that Salmonella was
the most frequently recognised agent involved in food-borne outbreaks in
the EU [14]. A large proportion of Salmonellosis arises from consumption
of contaminated eggs or meat products [5]. Barker and colleagues
previously reported that work surfaces can become heavily colonized after
processing with contaminated food [29]. Numerous food-borne outbreaks
of Salmonella have been linked to contaminated processing areas including
a processing line [33-34], utensils [35] and in food storage containers [36].
Salmonella attachment and survival in food processing environments may
be assisted by the ability to form a biofilm.
As a result, there are a large number of studies investigating Salmonella
biofilm formation on contact surfaces such as glass [56, 84, 102, 106, 134,
189], steel [147-148, 188, 207, 220] or using more high-throughput
methods such as the microtitre plate based method [56, 86, 96, 111-112,
159, 165, 178, 191]. However due to number of studies performed using
different laboratory models, various Salmonella strains and altered
methodologies, there are substantial disparities in the results reported.
Moreover, it is also difficult to assess the extent of repeatability of some
experimental work on which conclusions are based.
Furthermore, based on guidelines provided by Association of Analytical
Communities International (AOAC) in order to validate qualitative and
quantitative assessment of food microbiology methods when examining
organisms such as S. enterica, numerous strains representing different
serovars should be used [235]. Lianou et al. also recently argued that it was
vital for the credibility of researchers to demonstrate their finding of S.
enterica biofilm properties on multiple strains of the pathogen [191].
Page 194