Kit By California Company Could Speed Up Process Of Salmonella Poisoning Detection

Conventional Salmonella testing kits can take up to 10 days to detect contamination in eggs. However, a new detection kit being developed at the University Of Pennsylvania, could speed up the process of Salmonella detection in eggs, making it faster for local and state health apartment to test possibly contaminated eggs.

Last year, a nationwide epidemic of Salmonella poisoning caused more than 2,000 people to become ill from salmonella food poisoning. The Food and Drug Administration, a little late in the day, announced a recall of more than half a billion eggs processed at an Iowa farm. That triggered a chain of events that has dragged the company that processed those eggs, all the way to Washington DC.

Part of the trouble with detection of Salmonella is that conventional testing can take a minimum of 10 days to confirm the presence of Salmonella in eggs. During the time that it takes to confirm the contamination, more people in California may be at a risk of food poisoning from eating contaminated eggs. Now, the University Pennsylvania has collaborated with a California-based company to develop a new DNA--based detection that can detect Salmonella contamination much better. The kit has been developed by Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine in collaboration with a California-based company called Life Technologies.

The new kit detects Salmonella contamination within a period of 27 hours. That'll dramatically reduce the time it takes to detect Salmonella contamination of food products, thereby helping state and local health departments to take action to prevent an epidemic. Besides, the kit would force egg manufacturers comply with the Food and Drug Administration's tough new expanded egg safety standards which went into effect in July. The new laws were much too late to prevent the Salmonella-epidemic, but it will now make it possible for egg producers to test their eggs for contamination, and make sure that the eggs are Salmonella-free before their release into the market.

That the kit comes from the state of Pennsylvania should not be a surprise to California food poisoning attorneys. The state has a long history of working to enhance existing egg safety and quality. In 1992, Pennsylvania was the first state to establish a voluntary egg quality assurance program. The kit has been just over a year in the making, and the costs of the project were observed by the University of Pennsylvania and Life Technologies.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a testing kit for liquid eggs. However, the researchers now want to focus their attention on a kit that would deliver quicker and faster results for Salmonella from the environment where the birds are kept. According to the researchers, this would make the detection of Salmonella even quicker. In fact, in the future, it may not be so far-fetched to find the detection time for Salmonella reduced to just 12 hours. The indications for consumer and food safety would be huge.