The effect of feeding a Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation derived postbiotic as a pre-harvest food safety hurdle for reducing Salmonella Enteritidis in the ceca of layer pullets.

Salmonella Enteritidis is responsible for a significant proportion of foodborne Salmonellosis in the United States and continues to be attributable to table eggs, despite increased federal oversight in recent years. Technologies, including feed additives, continue to be evaluated for pre-harvest application of their potential food safety benefits. Here, Diamond V Original XPC™, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation based postbiotic (SCFP), was evaluated for its effectiveness in the reduction of Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) colonization in young layer pullets. A total of forty, day-old Hy-Line W-36 layer pullets were equally divided and randomly assigned to one of two dietary treatments with SCFP, or without (PCON) and orally gavaged on Day 28 with 10 6 CFU/mL of SE. Another twenty, day-old layer pullets were fed the same control feed without SCFP and blank inoculated on Day 28 with 1 ml of sterile PBS to serve as a negative control (NCON). Qualitative and quantitative analyses of cecal Salmonella contents were performed for all birds on Day 32. The prevalence of SE in the ceca of all directly challenged birds was 100%, however, the SE concentration in birds fed SCFP diet (3.35 Log 10 CFU/g) was significantly lower ( P <0.0001) than that of the PCON birds not fed SCFP (4.49 Log 10 CFU/g). Moreover, the proportion of SE colonized individuals with enumerable SE concentrations was lower in SCFP fed birds (57.9%) when compared to the PCON (95.0%). These data suggest that inclusion of SCFP in the diet may aid in the reduction of SE within the ceca of commercial laying hens and could serve as an additional, pre-harvest food safety hurdle.