Prevalence of Salmonella enteritidis in poultry shell eggs in Arkansas

The objective of this study was to determine whether poultry shell eggs are a major reservoir of Salmonella enteritidis in Arkansas. One hundred dozen commercially purchased shell eggs were cultured for the presence of Salmonella sp. After each dozen eggs was examined, the contents of the 12 eggs were separated from their shells. The contents and the shells were separately pooled and cultured. One dozen of the 100 dozen egg shells cultured were found to be externally contaminated with S heidelberg, while none of the contents of the 100 dozen eggs were found to contain Salmonella organisms. The reevaluation of previously obtained telephone follow-up data on 204 patients with Salmonella infections from 1992-1993 revealed that 30 had consumed raw eggs before their salmonellosis but only one patient was infected with S enteritidis. These data suggest that poultry shell eggs are not a major cause of human illness due to S enteritidis in Arkansas.