Setting up a french molecular sub-typing database for Salmonella surveillance in the pig and pork industry

En 2008, salmonellosis was the second most frequently reported zoonotic disease in humans in Europe, accounting for more than 131,000 confirmed cases. Moreover, Salmonella was one of the leading causes of food poisoning outbreaks in France and Europe in 2008 (2). EFSA has shown that pork meat and products accounted for 10.2% of Salmonella food sources. In addition, EFSA’s survey of Salmonella in slaughtered pigs in 2006-2007 showed a significant prevalence of 17.6% on pig carcasses in France (1). In this context, IFIP, the French Pork Institute, has since 2006 been developing a database of epidemiological information, serotyping data and PFGE profiles of 550 representative Salmonella strains specifically isolated from the pig and pork industry. This database aims to establish how Salmonella strains circulate from pig farming to finished products in order to better control the hazard, and to develop a monitoring tool for the pork sector. Moreover, since 1997, through the “Salmonella network”, AFSSA-LERQAP has been developing a national database for strains isolated from the entire agro-food chain. This database includes the most frequently detected Salmonella serotypes and contains 3500 PFGE profiles of strains isolated from food, animals and the environment. This database is regularly consulted by public health and food authorities during investigations and outbreaks. In order to improve the national surveillance of Salmonella in pig production, both institutes, IFIP and AFSSA-LERQAP, plan to share their PFGE databases. This may allow the identification of common clusters and improve the ability to react in case of outbreaks. In the present work, we report on trends in serovar and intra-serovar diversity of 550 Salmonella strains constituting the current pig and pork sector database, and make a preliminary comparison of 216 Salmonella strains from this database with the AFSSA-LERQAP database.