Application of the redox potential measurement-based technique for the detection of Salmonella in raw milk and milk products

Abstract

Salmonellosis, considered as an important human zoonotic infection caused by several serovars of Salmonella subspecies enteritis, is widely distributed in humans and animals and has been isolated from nearly all animal classes as well as from humans. Contamination of raw milk can often be traced back to farm faecal contamination and the cow‘s udders and is a well documented source of infections from Salmonella causing several documented outbreaks in the last decade. Furthermore an increasing number of people are drinking raw, unpasteurized milk and consuming products made from raw, unpasteurized milk despite the well-documented hazards associated with this practice. The goal of this study was to detect Salmonella in raw milk and cheese made from raw milk using the redox-potential measurement based method. Our present research shows that by the application of redox-potential measurements, we can significantly accelerate the detection of salmonella in raw milk or cheese made from raw milk and this without the enrichment phase needed in most of the other available microbiological methods. The time requirement of the detection of the presence of Salmonella by the redox potential measurement,(with the rapid confirmation test) was 15 h, by the classical method, with biochemical confirmation was 4 days (96h).