Posted: March 31st, 2012 - 12:31pm
Source: Daily Globe

WORTHINGTON — Each year, foodborne diseases kill approximately 2.2 million people around the world, and most of them are children. It’s an issue that impacts every country, with an average of 3,000 deaths recorded in the United States alone.
Finding ways to reduce the presence of foodborne pathogens is booming business in the bioscience and biotechnology industry, and one speaker at the Regional Bioscience Conference in Worthington Thursday said his company is working on a probiotic that would reduce the spread of salmonella in poultry processing plants.
William Davies, CEO of Pacific Vet Group USA, said the current mode of processing chickens can result in the bird’s crop — an organ located at the base of a chicken’s neck that stores its food — being ruptured. When a crop carrying the salmonella bacteria ruptures, it has the potential to contaminate the equipment and product.
“We’re in the process of developing a product that can be administered to chickens at feed withdrawal and it will reduce salmonella in the crop by 1,000-fold,” Davies said in his presentation. “With our product, chicken will hit the line with a sanitized crop and no longer contaminate the processing plant.”
Use of pre- and probiotics in the animal health industry is “increasing dramatically,” Davies said, adding some of the top animal health companies are developing products that will reduce pathogen loads.