Dr. Daryll Emery from Epitopix, LLC presents on Pre-Harvest Control of Salmonella Through Vaccination of Food Animals.  Salmonella enterica is a ubiquitous bacterium that is able to infect and colonize the intestinal mucosa of all animals in the human food chain and is considered to be amongst the most prevalent food borne pathogens on the planet.  The ability of Salmonella to evade host defenses and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains highlight the urgent need for developing improved strategies for the prevention and control of this pathogen.  Our investigations show that a composition of outer membrane proteins expressed by Salmonella in response to iron restriction constitutes an effective, safe and broad spectrum vaccine.  The studies demonstrate the efficacy of the vaccine in multiple farm animal species both under controlled laboratory conditions as well as in large commercial field trials with both systemic and oral homologous and heterologous challenge models.  Field and experiemental challenge studies in both domestic poultry and cattle show the vaccine to be highly efficacious in reducing morbidity/mortality and decreasing fecal shedding of numerous serotypes of Salmonella.  Taken together, the results of our studies suggest that administration of the vaccine to farm animals will not only reduce morbidity and mortality in livestock populations, but may also serve to reduce the transmission of Salmonella as a food borne pathogen to human populations.