**1. Introduction**

392 Salmonella – A Dangerous Foodborne Pathogen

Weenk G.H. 1992. Microbiological assessment of culture media: comparison and statistical

Westerman R.B., He Y., Keen J.E., Littledike E.T., Kwang J. Production and characterization

Williams, J.E. 1981. Salmonellas in poultry feeds—a worldwide review. Part II: Methods in

Wolber P.K., Green R.L. (1990). Detection of bacteria by transduction of ice nucleation genes.

Woods D.F., Reen F.J., Gilroy D., Buckley J., Frye J.G., Boyd E.F. Rapid multiplex PCR and

Wray and A. Wray (eds), Salmonella in Domestic Animals (CAB International, Wallingford,

Wu Y., Brovko L., Griffiths M.W. (2001). Influence of phage population on the phage-

Yamazaki-Matsune, W., Taguchi, M., Seto, K., Kawahara, R., Kawatsu, K., Kumeda, Y.,

of monoclonal antibodies specific for the lipopolysaccharide of *Escherichia coli* O157.

real-time TaqMan PCR assays for detection of Salmonella enterica and the highly virulent serovarsCholeraesuis and Paratyphi C. J Clin Microbiol. 2008

mediated bioluminescent adenylate kinase (AK) assay for detection of bacteria. Lett

Yaron, S. & Matthews, K.R. 2002. "A reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction assay for detection of viable *Escherichia coli* O157:H7: investigation of specific target genes", Journal of Applied Microbiology*,* vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 633-640. Zhang, W. &Knabel, S.J. 2005. "Multiplex PCR assay simplifies serotyping and sequence

typing of *Listeria monocytogenes* associated with human outbreaks", J Food

evaluation of methods. Int J Food Microbiol.17(2):159-81.

isolation and identification. *World's Poult. Sci. J.* 37, 19–25.

J Clin Microbiol. 1997 Mar;35(3):679-84.

Trends Biotechnol 8:276–279

Appl Microbiol 33:311–315

Protection*,* vol. 68, no. 9, pp. 1907-1910.

Dec;46(12):4018-22.

UK), 1-17.

The analysis of food products for presence of pathogenic microorganisms is one of the basic steps to control safety and quality of food. Development of new, fast, and reliable identification methods for biological threats are necessary to meet the safety standards of food products and risk management. *Salmonella* spp., a marker of food products safety, is widely distributed foodborne pathogen.

The standard culture methods to detect the presence of microorganisms in food products are well developed; although these methods require 4 to 5 days to obtain presumptive positive or negative results. These tests are time-consuming and can take up to 7 days depending on the realization of biochemical and serological confirmations. In addition, sensitivity of cultures can be affected by antibiotic treatment, inadequate sampling, and a small number of viable microorganisms in samples.

Standardized classical culture methods are still in use by many labs, especially by regulatory agencies, because they are harmonized methods, looked at as the "gold standards" in food diagnostics and thus overall well accepted. These are important aspects in international trade and compliance testing. A serious drawback is that, although they demand no expensive infrastructure and are rather cheap in consumables, they are laborious to perform, demand large volumes usage of liquid and solid media and reagents, and encompass timeconsuming procedures both in operation and data collection.

As an alternative to time-consuming culture methods, several approaches have been developed to accelerate detection of pathogenic microorganisms in food products. In the present work, besides the standard method of *Salmonella* spp. detection in food products (ISO 6579:2003) some alternative detection methods have been presented.
