Salmonella is one of the leading worldwide foodborne pathogens
responsible for illnesses and hospitalizations. Salmonellas capacity to
form biofilms contributes to its resistance and persistence in both host
and non-host environments, and is especially important in food
processing settings. Because cross-contamination still happens during
food processing and preparation, other down-stream safety measures
must be applied, like the use of control agents of foodborne pathogens in
food products. Phages are the natural killers of bacteria, innocuous to
human and animals, and good candidates to be used in the control of
bacterial pathogens. In this work we aimed to characterize a S. Enteritidis
phage, phi38, which was shown to have 4.3 kbp in size, dsDNA genome
and to contain 60ORFs. We also evaluated whether the addition of phi38
on poultry skin samples could decrease the levels of S. Enteritidis. For
this, two approaches were used: a preventive approach focusing on
decreasing Salmonella colonization ability of phage-pretreated skins; and
a control one, aiming to kill Salmonella biofilms already present in the
poultry skins. The effect of these two approaches was investigated at
refrigerated temperatures (-18 and 4ºC) and also during 1 h at RT (22ºC).
While poor effectiveness was observed using phi38 to control and reduce
Salmonella biofilms following in vitro contamination of skins (< 1 log
reduction of CFU) at all tested conditions, the preventive approach
showed promising results (> 2 log reduction of Salmonella colonization).
In this way, this study endorses that phages can be used to prevent
foodborne pathogen colonization and consequently to promote food
safety
