Salmonella Control Measures at Farm in Swine Production

Salmonella is one of the most important food-borne pathogens. Each year a high number of cases as well as outbreaks of Salmonella in humans are reported (EFSA, 2011). Despite the fact that Salmonella can cause disease in pigs mainly associated to infections by Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Cholerasuis, the importance of swine salmonellosis is related to human infections caused by pork products. During the nineties and the first years of the present century it was estimated that 10% of the human salmonellosis cases were attributed to pork products (Hald et al., 2004), classically categorized as the third most common source of human infections after poultry and turkey meat. Nevertheless with the implementation of control programs in avian production with the subsequent prevalence reduction, the role of pork products have been enhanced and nowadays it is the second most common source of human salmonellosis after laying hens (Pires et al., 2011). Regarding swine salmonellosis, control programs are not compulsory at the moment but the EU Regulation 2160/2003 has established the need for developing proper and effective measures to detect and control Salmonella at all relevant stages of pork production chain and particularly at the primary production level in order to reduce the prevalence and the risk that Salmonella poses to public health (EU Regulation 2160/2003). From our point of view, Salmonella control should start at the end of the pork production chain (slaughterhouses and finishing farms) and go back to the first steps of the production system (breeding herds and feed suppliers). The compulsory or voluntary Salmonella control programmes that have already been established in several European countries base their Salmonella evaluation on serological and carcass microbiological contamination results principally (Alban et al., 2002; Nielsen et al., 2001). At the farm level, these control programmes include the implementation of specific measures to reduce the Salmonella prevalence in those herds identified as highly contaminated according to their serological results.