Bacteria Fighting Bacteria
New Approach To Food Safety

WASHINGTON —(AP)— In a breakthrough for improved food safety, researchers have unveiled a method for preventing salmonella bacteria in chickens by growing benign microbes inside newly hatched chicks.

"This is a major milestone for food safety," Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said in a National Press Club speech.

Without fanfare, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved use of Preempt, as the product from MS BioSciences Inc. of Dundee, Ill., is known. The company jointly developed the product with the Agriculture Department and is licensed to market it beginning in May.

Glickman said tests on 80,000 chicks had reduced the presence of salmonella to zero with only one application. He said the department is now focusing research on whether it can prevent salmonella from getting into eggs, and other work is examining whether similar techniques can be used to control E. coli and other organisms in cattle and hogs.

The product, Glickman added, "may prove just the tip of the iceberg in a new food safety revolution."

Richard Auletta, a spokesman for Perdue Farms in New York, said the company would look into the new method.

"We have looked into similar things, although not this exact method," he said. "But we don't think there's any silver bullet out there."

Salmonella, one of the leading causes of foodborne illnesses and a particular problem in poultry, is carried primarily in an animal's digestive tract and is transmitted through feces. It and other pathogens cause some 9000 deaths from food poisoning every year in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Processing plants use chlorine washers and chilly temperatures to control the bacteria, but it still winds up on about 20 percent of the chicken in the grocery case, said National Broiler Council spokesman Richard Lobb. Some 32 million chickens are processed every working day in America.

John DeLoach, who led development of the technique at the Agriculture Department and is now a top officer of MS BioSciences, said Preempt is a culture of 29 benign, naturally-occurring bacteria discovered in 1993 by USDA researchers in College Station, Texas.

The technique involves spraying newly hatched chickens with a solution containing the 29 "good" bacteria. The chicks instinctively peck at their wet feathers and ingest the solution that way. The culture then grows inside the chicken when it is most vulnerable to infection and shuts out other microbes including salmonella.

"There is no space for it. It's a competition for food. There isn't enough food for all of them," DeLoach explained.

The method is the first time the FDA has ever approved a mix of bacteria as an animal drug, but it mimics what was once a natural process. Chicks can get benign bacteria through the droppings of mother hens, but in modern agriculture the two are separated long before eggs hatch.

"The next frontier is having these farm-level interventions," said the Broiler Council's Lobb. "It's a tool that will improve the microbiological profile of the birds."

Although the FDA approval is only for control of salmonella in chicken, DeLoach said tests have indicated success against other illness-causing bacteria such as campylobacter, E. coli and listeria. In addition, he said it is effective in preventing salmonella on turkeys.

Farmers who use Preempt must take care not to feed their birds preventative antibiotics — a majority of growers do today — because they could kill the "good" microbes. The poultry industry wants to move away from antibiotics anyway, because harmful bacteria are developing resistance to them.

For consumers, DeLoach estimated the cost of Preempt at about two cents per pound of chicken, which would cost the average consumer about $1.50 a year if passed along by companies.