Campylobacter in poultry, pork and beef

Campylobacter infection has become one of the most important zoonoses worldwide. A low prevalence of Campylobacter is generally found in beef and pork at retail, although they may still be sources of infection. Based on the high prevalence of poultry-associated infections, this chapter mainly focuses on rapid methods for detection of Campylobacter in this particular production chain, and describes the routes of transmission and sampling in the different levels as well as intervention strategies.

The chapter focuses on the introduction, infection dynamics, and sampling of Campylobacter throughout the poultry production chain, from farm to consumer level. It also describes culture-based, immunological, and molecular methods for rapid detection, characterization, and enumeration for Campylobacter.

Rapid methods can generally be also more sensitive and specific than culture-based methods, and other advantages can be a high possibility of automation and detection of viable but nonculturable (VBNC) cells. The strength of rapid methods lies in their ability to screen large numbers of samples, identify the negative ones, allowing resources to be focused on confirming and culturing of presumptive positive samples to produce isolates for further characterization.

The choice of a rapid method will always depend on the requested information and be influenced by the relevant matrix and the expected level of contamination.