Efficacy of feed additives against Campylobacter in live broilers during the entire rearing period

Abstract

Poultry meat is the major source of human campylobacteriosis, the most frequently reported zoonosis in the EU. The prevalence of Campylobacter colonization in European broiler flocks is 71%. Despite considerable efforts, there is still no effective strategy available to prevent or reduce Campylobacter colonization in broilers. This study tested a wide variety of feed additives to reduce Campylobacter shedding in primary poultry production. Twelve additives containing organic or fatty acids, monoglycerides, plant extracts, prebiotics, or probiotics were tested. For each additive, broilers contaminated with Campylobacter jejuni were fed with an additive free diet (control group) or with a supplemented diet (treated group) and Campylobacter loads compared at three sampling times. No treatment was able to prevent broiler colonization by Campylobacter, and there was a high degree of variation in contamination among the birds. At 14 d of age, eight treatments significantly decreased the colonization level compared to the control group by a maximum of 2 log10 CFU/g. At 35 d of age, three of these treatments still had a significant effect with a maximum reduction of 1.88 log10 CFU/g for a probiotic. At 42 d of age, only one short-chain fatty acid was still significantly efficient with a mean reduction over 2 log10 CFU/g. In addition, a probiotic and a prebiotic-like compound significantly decreased the contamination by a maximum of 3 log10 CFU/g, only at the 42-d sampling period. This study gives promising results regarding the use of feed additives to reduce Campylobacter infection in flocks. Nevertheless, a global approach, combining intervention measures at the different steps of the broiler meat production chain could have a greater impact on the reduction of public health risk.

Current and Potential Treatments for Reducing Campylobacter Colonization in Animal Hosts and Disease in Humans

“…Although they showed no significant impact on their own, prebiotics did significantly decrease the amount of Campylobacter when used in combination with three probiotic species (Arsi et al, 2015a). Similar studies supported these results where Campylobacter loads were reduced in the presence of a combination of prebiotics and probiotics (Peng et al, 2015; Gracia et al, 2016; Guyard-Nicodeme et al, 2016). …”

Effect of Feed Additives on Productivity and Campylobacter spp. Loads in Broilers Reared under Free Range Conditions

“…None of the three treatments (T3, T4, and T7) used from day 1 was able to prevent Campylobacter colonization detected at day 42. Similar results were observed in previous works testing several feed additives in experimental facilities with artificial Campylobacter contamination on fast-growing broilers (Gracia et al, 2016; Guyard-Nicodeme et al, 2016; Saint-Cyr et al, 2016b). Moreover, no treatment using single product (T2, T3, T4, T5, and T7) led to a significant reduction of Campylobacter in caeca, compared to the control group at the end of the rearing period.…”

“…Reduction in the caeca was low, as less than 1 log 10 CFU/g (0.82 ± 0.25 log10 CFU/g) was observed. Several previous studies presented results of feed or water additives leading to a reduction of Campylobacter colonization higher than 2 log 10 CFU/g but they were performed in experimental facilities with an artificial Campylobacter challenge (Nishiyama et al, 2014; Arsi et al, 2015; Gracia et al, 2016; Guyard-Nicodeme et al, 2016; Saint-Cyr et al, 2016b). However, these controlled conditions cannot reflect the field conditions, especially free-range conditions exposed to multiple sources of contaminations and contaminated with genetically diverse Campylobacter isolates (Rivoal et al, 2005).…”

“…Feed additives with non-antibiotic products such as probiotic bacteria, prebiotics, plant extracts or organic acids against Campylobacter colonization are still extensively studied. They give some promising results in experimental trials leading to at least 2 log 10 CFU/g reduction or more in Campylobacter colonization for some of them (Skanseng et al, 2010; Ghareeb et al, 2012; Guyard-Nicodeme et al, 2016; Saint-Cyr et al, 2016b). In these studies testing feed additives, trials were generally performed using conventional production conditions: indoor rearing, broiler breeds, whole rearing (Hilmarsson et al, 2006; Thibodeau et al, 2015; Gracia et al, 2016; Guyard-Nicodeme et al, 2016), or shorter periods (Solis de Los Santos et al, 2008; Skanseng et al, 2010; Ghareeb et al, 2012).…”

The Relationship between Human Campylobacteriosis and Broilers

“…directly from chicken droppings and thus avoid culture-associated bias resulting from failure of recovery from viable but non-culturable states previously described in Campylobacter. 36 Intervention methods which are effective in the pre-harvest stages in farms include application of strict biosecurity measures, good animal husbandry, and health measures. 34 The elucidation of the seasonal components of human campylobacteriosis epidemiology would improve with increasing the integration molecular subtyping.…”