Thermal inactivation of desiccation-adapted Salmonella spp. in aged chicken litter was investigated in comparison with that in a nonadapted control to examine potential cross-tolerance of desiccation-adapted cells to heat treatment. A mixture of four Salmonella serovars was inoculated into the finished compost with 20, 30, 40, and 50% moisture contents for a 24-h desiccation adaptation. Afterwards, the compost with desiccation-adapted cells was inoculated into the aged chicken litter with the same moisture content for heat treatments at 70, 75, 80, 85, and 150°C. Recovery media were used to allow heat-injured cells to resuscitate. A 5-log reduction in the number of the desiccation-adapted cells in aged chicken litter with a 20% moisture content required >6, >6, ϳ4 to 5, and ϳ3 to 4 h of exposure at 70, 75, 80, and 85°C, respectively. As a comparison, a 5-log reduction in the number of nonadapted control cells in the same chicken litter was achieved within ϳ1.5 to 2, ϳ1 to 1.5, ϳ0.5 to 1, and <0.5 h at 70, 75, 80, and 85°C, respectively. The exposure time required to obtain a 5-log reduction in the number of desiccation-adapted cells gradually became shorter as temperature and moisture content were increased. At 150°C, desiccation-adapted Salmonella cells survived for 50 min in chicken litter with a 20% moisture content, whereas control cells were detectable by enrichment for only 10 min. Our results demonstrated that the thermal resistance of Salmonella in aged chicken litter was increased significantly when the cells were adapted to desiccation. This study also validated the effectiveness of thermal processing being used for producing chicken litter free of Salmonella contamination.
Chicken litter is a waste by-product of poultry production and is comprised of feces, wasted feeds, bedding materials, and feathers (1). More than 14 million tons of chicken litter is produced annually in the United States (2). Chicken litter is usually recycled as an organic fertilizer or soil amendment for direct application to agricultural land (3). However, chicken litter may contain loads of human pathogens, such as Salmonella spp., that have great potential to directly or indirectly contaminate fresh produce and cause food-borne disease outbreaks (1). Currently, high-temperature processing is the most commonly applied method to reduce or eliminate potential pathogens in chicken litter (1, 4).Some microorganisms become acclimatized to desiccation stress in a dry environment, and induction of the desiccation stress response in bacterial cells makes them more resistant to the dry condition in which they are present (5). Most importantly, exposure to a single stress is found to be associated with the development of cross-tolerance to multiple unrelated stresses (6). Using laboratory models, various researchers have demonstrated that the desiccated cells exhibit increased thermal resistance (6-8). Previous thermal-inactivation studies on bacterial pathogens in chicken litter have used only nonstressed cells (1, 4). Therefore, to si...