Rapid and definitive detection of Salmonella in foods by PCR.

The BAX system for screening Salmonella is one of the first commercial PCR-based systems for the detection of food-borne pathogens. It is able to give a confirmed result within 28 h. There was 98.6% and 95.8% agreement between the BAX system and conventional cultural analysis for the detection of Salmonella in artificially inoculated and uninoculated food samples, respectively. In both cases, the BAX system generated more positive detections than cultural analysis. The speed of assay, case of use and high specificity and sensitivity of the BAX system for the detection of food-borne Salmonella make it an attractive method for routine food microbiology laboratories.