Distinctive Culture Expressions of Enterobacteria Interfering with Isolation of Salmonella spp. during the Application of the Recommended ISO 6579-1:2017

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Summary

The procedure described in ISO 6579:12017 to isolate Salmonella spp. from swine samples was evaluated. Of 615 tissue samples from 123 healthy pigs from 15 farrow-to-finish herds in Central Greece samples, 14 serovars were identified by the Greek National Reference Laboratory.

 

General comments

Overall, I believe that the results section can be made easier to follow. A summary table can assist with this. Data such as the number of samples identified from each of the media as Salmonella can be presented in a table as one must read through a lot of text to get some of this information. Also, how many samples were sent to the Greek National Reference Laboratory? 

Another observation is that on page 7  the images in Figure 3 are blurred and should be replaced with clearer images if they exist.

 

Specific comments

Line 21 "The findings necessitated in the depth evaluation" should be revised to, for example, "An evaluation of the culture media was conducted."

Lines 26 to 29    In the Abstract the sentence, "It was concluded that the presence of atypical Salmonella strains negatively affects the prevalence of a Salmonella, this the identification of carrier pigs, eventually affecting the efficiency of control programs", needs to be more fully stated and might be better placed in the discussion. While you have identified that atypical strains are less likely to be identified,  are you saying that carrier pigs usually are infected with atypical Salmonella strains and that an inability to identify them will compromise control programs OR is your point that if it occurs that atypical Salmonella are present in carrier pigs, they can escape detection and a control program can be compromised?

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript provides new insights in the isolation and characterization of Salmonella spp. in swine samples during the application of the recommended ISO 6579-1:2017. Overall, the research is of interest and the manuscript is well written. I highly recommend it for publication after some minor corrections. 

 

Line 39: “ Its effective control depends on the accurate estimation of Salmonella prevalence”.  Please, add that the accurate estimation not only depends on the isolation but also on the sampling plans, sample points (surfaces of the slaughterhouse or part of the pork tested for presence of Salmonella), and number of grams/surface area tested. 

 

Lines 189-198: Please put Salmonella and enterica in italics.

Lines 226: S. Cerro, put Salmonella in italics. 

Line 228. Change E. coli by Escherichia coli, is the first time in the document.  

 

Lines 257-272. Put Salmonella, T. guamensis and K. ozanae in italics.

Line 344. “Compomise between improved sensitiy speed”. Please also add specificity and selectivity in this sentence. 

 

Line 409: Please change Escherichia coli by E. coli 

 

In this study, the use of a selective media with an overlayer of non-selective media has not been addressed. Also, the incubation Salmonella petri dishes in selective media for more time (more days) than recommended by the manufacturer has not been addressed. According to literature, both strategies could enable some Salmonella that are not able to grow in selective media to do it. Please justify why these strategies were not assessed and discuss the possible impact. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf