Publications by authors named "Mark E Berrang"

Salmonella is a common cause of human foodborne illness, which is frequently associated with consumption of contaminated or undercooked poultry meat. Serotype Infantis is among the most common serotypes isolated from poultry meat products globally. Isolates of serotype Infantis carrying the pESI plasmid, the most dominant strain of Infantis, have been shown to exhibit oxidizer tolerance.

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Campylobacter jejuni is the leading foodborne bacterial pathogen that causes human gastroenteritis worldwide linked to the consumption of undercooked broiler livers. Application of bacteriophages during poultry production has been used as an alternative approach to reduce contamination of poultry meat by Campylobacter. To make this approach effective, understanding the presence of the bacteriophage sequences in the CRISPR spacers in C.

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Human Campylobacter infections have been associated with chicken and other poultry meat products. Environmental conditions such as temperature and season can affect Campylobacter recoverability from chicken meat products. In the presented study, we sought to investigate the relationship between ambient weather conditions and the isolation of Campylobacter from chicken flocks, as well as the subtype of these isolates.

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Controlling in poultry processing continues to be important to processors and consumers. Cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) has proven to be effective in vitro in controlling This study evaluated the recovery of after overnight storage in 4°C filter-sterilized carcass rinsate containing CPC from 0.44 to 909 ppm (μg/mL).

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Campylobacter spp. are a leading cause of human foodborne illness associated with chicken meat products in the United States. Chicken livers, including exudate from packaging, commonly carry Campylobacter and could be a source of illness if mishandled.

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The similarity of the genome with and their presence in the same niche may facilitate gene transfer between them. A better understanding of the mechanisms responsible for bacterial virulence requires an in-depth knowledge of the genetic characteristics of these bacteria. In this context, draft whole genome sequences were completed on five isolated from milk and dairy products in Egypt.

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Salmonella enterica is a major cause of human foodborne illness and is often attributed to poultry food sources. S. enterica serovar Infantis, specifically those carrying the pESI plasmid, has become a frequently isolated serotype from poultry meat samples at processing and has caused numerous recent human infections.

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We tested the hypothesis that Campylobacter isolated from chicken ceca and river water in an overlapping geographic area would share genetic information. Isolates of C. jejuni from chicken ceca were collected from a commercial slaughter plant and isolates of C.

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In chickens, early life exposure to environmental microbes has long-lasting impacts on gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome development and host health and growth, via mechanisms that remain uncharacterized. In this study, we demonstrated that administrating a fecal microbiome transplant (FMT) from adults to day-of-hatch chicks results in significantly higher body mass of birds and decreased residual feed intake (RFI), implying enhanced feed efficiency, at 6 weeks of age. To assess the potential mechanisms through which FMT affects adult bird phenotype, we combined 16 S rRNA gene amplification, metagenomic, and comparative genomic approaches to survey the composition and predicted activities of the resident microbiome of various GI tract segments.

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Conventional Salmonella surveillance requires a week for isolation, confirmation, and subsequent serotyping. We previously showed that this could be reduced by 24 h by combining the pre-enrichment and enrichment steps into a single selective pre-enrichment step and was tested on directly after picking. The goal of this study was 2-fold: 1) to evaluate the use of selective pre-enrichment through each step of processing, including postintervention when the Salmonella load is reduced, and 2) to assess any changes in serovar populations in Salmonella positive samples.

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Abstract: Semicarbazide (SEM) is routinely employed as an indicator for the use of nitrofurazone, a banned antimicrobial. The validity of SEM as a nitrofurazone marker has been scrutinized because of other possible sources of the compound. Nonetheless, a U.

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Abstract: Campylobacter is a bacterial pathogen that causes human foodborne illnesses worldwide, and outbreaks have been associated with consumption of undercooked chicken livers. The objectives of this study were to compare two PCR assays of 250 Campylobacter isolates for identification to species, to assess antibiotic resistance of the isolates, and to analyze genetic diversity of the quinolone resistance determining regions (QRDRs) of the isolates. A double-blind design was used to identify the species of Campylobacter; 181 (72%) of the isolates were identified as Campylobacter jejuni, and 69 (28%) isolates were identified as Campylobacter coli by both PCR assays.

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The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in clinical settings and in food production have been linked to the increased prevalence and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AR). Consequently, public health and consumer concerns have resulted in a remarkable reduction in antibiotics used for food animal production. However, there are no data on the effectiveness of antibiotic removal in reducing AR shared through horizontal gene transfer (HGT).

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Abstract: The ubiquity of Listeria monocytogenes in the environment affects the food industry and presents concerns for frozen food facilities. This study determined the prevalence and numbers of Listeria species and L. monocytogenes on raw produce arriving at frozen food facilities.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The concept of successional trajectories explains how small initial differences in community composition can lead to large variations in mature communities, particularly in the context of microbiomes in animals.
  • - In commercial poultry settings, chicks are isolated from adult birds, creating a different microbial community development trajectory compared to non-industrial environments where they encounter various microbes, yet the impacts of these differences are not well understood.
  • - The study involved transferring cecal material across generations of birds to assess microbial community stability, comparing the effects of host-selected cecal versus environmental inocula on the chicks’ gut microbiomes and health, revealing that the community structure changed significantly with cecal inoculation and impacted chick growth.
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A reliable and standardized classification of is important for accurate strain identification during outbreak investigations. Current whole-genome sequencing (WGS)-based approaches for strain characterization are either difficult to standardize, rendering them less suitable for data exchange, or are not freely available. Thus, we developed a portable and open-source tool, Haplo-ST, to improve standardization and provide maximum discriminatory potential to WGS data tied to a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) framework.

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Here, we present the draft genome sequences of two strains, HF117_J1_D and USDA818B3_A, isolated in Pomona, California, from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of backyard and commercial broiler chickens, respectively. The draft genomes of both strains appear to represent novel species.

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Here, we present the draft genome sequences of two strains, An7 and USDA918EY, isolated from goose feces (Bend, OR, USA) and chicken ceca (Pomona, CA, USA), respectively. These data may assist with analyses of microorganisms associated with free-ranging and commercial avian species.

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Poultry is a major reservoir, but conventional culture-based methods typically identify the most abundant serovars while those less abundant remain undetected. Choice of enrichment procedure also introduces bias, and for broiler carcasses, a 1-min rinse before preenrichment is insufficient to release all present. The inability to assess serovar diversity means that serovars more often associated with human illness may be masked by more abundant .

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The pH of Salmonella pre-enrichment media can become acidic (pH 4.0-5.0) when feeds/ingredients are incubated for 24 h.

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Next-generation DNA sequencing is rapidly becoming a powerful tool for food animal management. One valuable use of this technology is to re-examine long-standing observations of performance differences associated with animal husbandry practices to better understand how these differences may be modulated by the gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome. The influences of environmental parameters such as air temperature and relative humidity on broiler chicken performance have commonly been observed, but how the GI microbiome may respond to seasonal environmental changes remains largely unknown.

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In a recent study, the pH of commonly used Salmonella pre-enrichment media became acidic (pH 4.0 to 5.0) when feed or feed ingredients were incubated for 24 h.

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Campylobacter can be difficult to recover from complex samples due to overgrowth by background bacteria. A 0.45- or 0.

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