The new ISO 6579-1: A real horizontal standard for detection of Salmonella, at last!

Up to 2016, three international standard methods existed for the detection of Salmonella spp. in food, animal feed and samples from the primary production stage: ISO 6785:2001 for milk and milk products, ISO 6579:2002 for (other) food and animal feed and Annex D of ISO 6579:2007 for samples from the primary production stage. In 2009, an ISO/CEN working group started with the revision of ISO 6579:2002 with two main aims: combining the three aforementioned standards in one document and improving the information in ISO 6579:2002. Additionally it was decided to split ISO 6579 into three parts, where part 1 describes the detection, part 2 the enumeration by mini-MPN (published in 2012) and part 3 the serotyping of Salmonella (published in 2014). This paper describes the experiments and choices made for improving the part on detection of Salmonella (ISO 6579-1). The final voting stage on (draft) ISO 6579-1 was finished by the end of December 2016, with a positive outcome. Finally, a real horizontal standard became available for detection of Salmonella in food, animal feed, environmental samples in the area of food production and food handling and in samples from the primary production stage in 2017.