PROBIOTICS AND PREBIOTICS IN POULTRY FEEDING: A STRATEGY TO REDUCE CAMPYLOBACTER JEJUNI

The quality and safety of foods is of outmost importance for governments, industry and consumers. The EU project Pathogen Combat (www.pathogencombat.com) has provided new essential information and methods on how to reduce the prevalence of pathogens across the entire food chain. During the five years, researchers have obtained new results which have been disseminated and tested into SMEs belonging to dairy, poultry, pork and beef and lamb production chain. The unique achievements of Pathogen Combat will be presented. In addition, we will focus on the use of probiotics and prebiotics as an intervention measure to reduce the prevalence of pathogens at farm level. Campylobacter jejuni has now emerged as a leading bacterial cause of food-borne gastroenteritis in humans around the world. Epidemiological studies indicate poultry and poultry products as a significant source of human infection. We evaluated the effects of two probiotic strains and two prebiotic compounds to modulate the gut microbiota of broiler chickens to obtain a competitive reduction of C. jejuni colonization. The experiments workflow counts: faecal samples collection at three different times, samples processing and qPCR analysis. The best strain, resulting from the first treatment, was then microencapsulated, coupled with the best prebiotic compound and fed to broiler chickens as synbiotic mixture. Detection and quantification of the targeted bacterial groups (Bifidobacterium spp., Lactobacillus spp., Campylobacter spp., and C. jejuni) were performed on fecal samples by Real-Time PCR using SybrGreen chemistry. C. jejuni concentration in poultry faeces was significantly (p