§ 147.17 - Laboratory procedure recommended for the bacteriological examination of cull chicks and poults for salmonella.

Link to an amendment published at 79 FR 38766, July 9, 2014.

The laboratory procedure described in this section is recommended for the bacteriological examination of cull chicks from egg-type and meat-type chicken flocks and waterfowl, exhibition poultry, and game bird flocks and poults from turkey flocks for salmonella.

(a) For cull chicks, from 25 randomly selected 1- to 5-day-old chicks that have not been placed in a brooding house, prepare 5 organ pools, 5 yolk pools, and 5 intestinal tissue pools as follows. For poults, from a sample of 10 poults that died within 10 days after hatching, prepare organ pools, yolk pools, and intestinal pools as follows:

(1) Organ pool: From each of five chicks or two poults, composite and mince 1- to 2-gram samples of heart, lung, liver, and spleen tissues. Include the proximal wall of the bursa of Fabricius for chicks only.

(2) Yolk pool: From each of five chicks or two poults, composite and mince 1- to 2-gram samples of the unabsorbed yolk sac or, if the yolk sac is essentially absent, the entire yolk stalk remnant.

(3) Intestinal pool: From each of five chicks or two poults, composite and mince approximately 0.5 cm2 sections of the crop wall and 5-mm-long sections of the duodenum, cecum, and ileocecal junction.

(b) Transfer each pool to tetrathionate selective enrichment broth (Hajna or Mueller-Kauffmann) at a ratio of 1 part tissue pool to 10 parts broth.

(c) For cull chicks, repeat the steps in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this section for each 5-chick group until all 25 chicks have been examined, producing a total of 15 pools (5 organ, 5 yolk, and 5 intestinal). For poults, repeat the steps in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this section for each two-poult group until all the poults in the sample have been examined.

(d) Culture the tetrathionate pools as outlined for selective enrichment in illustration 2 of §147.11. Incubate the organ and yolk pools for 24 hours at 37 °C and the intestinal pools at 41.5 °C. Plate as described in illustration 2 of §147.11 and examine after both 24 and 48 hours of incubation. Confirm suspect colonies as described. Further culture all salmonella-negative tetrathionate broths by delayed secondary enrichment procedures described for environmental, organ, and intestinal samples in illustration 2 of §147.11. A colony lift assay may also be utilized as a supplement to TSI and LI agar picks of suspect colonies.

[61 FR 11525, Mar. 21, 1996, as amended at 72 FR 1425, Jan. 12, 2007]