After last summers’ Salmonella egg outbreak and recall, the value of accurate and quick testing methods for Salmonella should be obvious.  A report today indicates progress is being made, and that a more rapid test is available.  Where traditional tests might need 10 days to confirm the presence of Salmonella enteritidis (the strain commonly associated with eggs): “a collaboration between Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and a life science company based in California has led to the launch of a new, faster DNA-based detection kit that tests for salmonella in poultry eggs. The kit reaches accurate results in about 27 hours.”

Shelley Rankin, associate professor of microbiology at Penn, was one of those responsible.  Rankin says that “FDA approval of the kit was a dream more than 15 years in the making.”

It does not appear, however, that the new test can assist with environmental sampling, as was done by the FDA at the Wright County/Quality Egg facility last summer once the outbreak was uncovered.  “The FDA approval was for testing liquid eggs. A kit that could deliver fast and accurate results for samples taken from the environment where the birds are kept could help producers detect salmonella even sooner.”