Rapid Salmonella Test Kit Is Out Haley McAdams Safe food handling just got a boost with the release recently of Applied Biosystems TaqMan, a new Salmonella enteritidis (SE) detection kit used on eggs. The kit already enjoys an “interim� approval for environmental sampling from the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture arm that oversees safety standards at poultry houses. Now the method can be employed to test for SE in both eggs and poultry houses, where pathogens can enter the food-supply chain early.
Because food safety depends largely on proper food handling, many restaurant owners today have made a food handler certification or a food safety certification an employment requirement. Still, the frequency of foodborne illness outbreaks speaks volumes about the need to safeguard the whole foodsupply line to ensure food safety. Life Technologies Corporation, the maker of TaqMan, will present its validation studies to the full technical committee in New Orleans in September. It expects its product to receive NPIP permanent approval then. According to Life Technologies, the kit is unique in the industry because it is the sole polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based tool available on the market that can quickly determine the presence of SE in dragswab samples obtained from production lines by directly targeting the pathogen's DNA.
Unlike culture-based methods, which typically take over 72 hours to return results, the kit delivers results within 27 hours. It can also differentiate SE from other serogroups of D1 Salmonella. Learn2serve.com, a 360training.com portal for online food safety certification and online food handler certification, helps safeguard the food-supply line by educating restaurant workers in the critical protocols of proper food handling and food safety.