Production of a New Vaccine for Poultry to Prevent Salmonella

Despite concerted efforts on both the part of the food industry and Federal regulators, already in 2011 there have been Salmonella foodborne illnesses in 31 U.S. states. Salmonella is a leading cause of foodborne illness. It is responsible each year for an estimated 1 million illnesses, 19,336 hospitalizations and 378 deaths. Salmonella associated outbreaks are primarily related to poultry meat and eggs. Despite the effort to control pathogenic Salmonella during poultry processing, the number of illnesses has not declined. Therefore, the control of pathogenic Salmonella has been a top research priority of USDA, which in 2010 published even tighter performance standards for controlling Salmonella in poultry products. The U.S. poultry industry has been producing broiler meat and egg products valued at $45 billion and $6.52 billion respectively in 2010. Arkansas has been consistently one of the top two states in the U.S. for poultry and egg production, valued at $3.7 billion. To protect consumers? health, decrease bird morbidity, and prevent product recalls, there is a widespread interest by the poultry industry in the development and verification of an effective Salmonella vaccination. There are currently competing Salmonella vaccines in the market, but all have serious efficacy, risk and cost drawbacks that are preventing widespread industry adoption. To be a commercial success, our new vaccine must compete in the market place that already contains competitive Salmonella vaccines. We will overcome the limitations of the current vaccines, because our new vaccine will provide: - Greater Efficacy: Using an avirulent, live vaccine is superior to many of the current vaccines that use dead Salmonella which provide only short-lived protection and are less effective in reducing horizontal (bird to bird) Salmonella transmission. - Improved Price Point: Our small company will have lower overhead than many commercial vaccines producers because the owners understand the limitations of the price-sensitive, commodity, poultry broiler and egg industries and embrace the marketing objectives as well as the science involved in the project. - Minimal Risk of Reversion: We will use and verify that our vaccine, a double deletion Salmonella strain, will not revert back to virulent, pathogenic Salmonella. - Controlled Retention: Our feasibility tests for Phase I will demonstrate that our avirulent Salmonella strain will ?be there when needed? to protect the newly hatched chick when it is most vulnerable--then clear out of its system ahead of slaughter for broilers or egg production for layers. This minimizes the risk of the birds testing ?false-positive? for pathogenic Salmonella.