A Cost Comparison (Cost Per Salmonella Enteritidis Outbreak Prevented) of a Regulatory Program and a Voluntary Quality Assurance Program for the Control of Salmonella Enteritidis (Se) in Eggs. A. T. Hogue and W. D. Schlosser, USDA/APHIS/VS, SE Control Program, 6525 Belcrest Rd., Presidential Building Room 205, Hyattsville, MD 20782
The Salmonella enteritidis Control Program was established in the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, in response to an increased number of human outbreaks of Salmonella enteritidis from eggs. Initially, egg trace investigations were used to locate and divert eggs to pasteurization for flocks implicated as the source of eggs in outbreaks of human illness. Later, a voluntary quality assurance program was established with egg producers in Pennsylvania to minimize Salmonella enteritidis contamination of eggs. We developed a model to estimate the number of SE cases prevented by each program and used Monte Carlo simulation of the model to provide bounds for our confidence in the estimate. We estimated the cost per Salmonella enteritidis case prevented for the regulatory program and for the voluntary quality assurance program and concluded that the voluntary quality assurance program was more cost effective in reducing the number of human Salmonella enteritidis cases from eggs.