A comparison of EF-18 agar and modified brilliant green agar with lutensit for isolation of Salmonella from poultry samples.

Two selective plating media were compared to determine their performance in a three-step protocol for isolation of Salmonella from faecal, litter, and fluff samples. The enrichment protocol consisted of: 1) Preenrichment in buffered peptone water (BPW), 2) Selective enrichment in Rappaport-Vassiliadis broth, and 3) Plating onto EF-18 agar and BGA/L simultaneously. From a total of 1101 samples, Salmonella was isolated from 158, 157 of which were faecal samples. Thirty-one of these isolates were recovered on one medium only, 18 could not be found on BGA/L and 13 could not be found on EF-18 agar. The relative specificity and sensitivity of each plating agar was determined by enumeration of false-positive and false-negative reactions. EF-18 agar compared favourably with BGA/L, displaying a sensitivity of 0.92 as opposed to 0.89 for BGA/L, calculated for the "fecal samples" group only. The calculated specificities for each group of samples were likewise considerably higher for EF-18 agar (0.75-0.91) than for BGA/L (0.35-0.55). Though EF-18 agar is slightly more expensive than BGA/L, the routine use of the former may result in a considerable reduction in overall laboratory costs due to its superior selectivity. On the other hand the combination of the 2 media clearly would reduce the number of false negative results, with little extra cost.