Use of the SALMOTYPE® meat juice ELISA for the detection of salmonella antibodies in serum of slaughter pigs

The German Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry have presented "guidelines for a program to reduce the introduction of salmonella into meat production by slaughter pigs";These guidelines intend to determine the prevalence of salmonella in farms raising slaughter pigs. For this, random samples are to be examined with a meat juice ELISA for the detection of salmonella antibodies. In this study the use of two such ELISA systems was tested. In order to compare the commercially available SALMOTYPE(R) meat juice ELISA with a meat juice ELISA developed by the German Federal Institute for Health Protection of Consumers and Veterinary Medicine (BgVV) test sera were examined in parallel via both systems. In these examinations the SALMOTYPE(R) meat juice ELISA showed a higher sensibility. Further experiments were tarried out to analyse the practical applicability of the SALMOTYPE(R) meat juice ELISA. For this, 119 serum samples of slaughter pigs were examined with the SALMOTYPE(R) meat juice ELISA. The advantages of this test system, which were already noticed in the comparison of the two test systems, like quick performance, ease of application and reliability of results, were confirmed in these examinations.