Title Pending 18993

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Ongoing discussions regarding new strategies to enhance control of Salmonella in meat and poultry include potential benefits of identifying product that exceeds various Salmonella levels. A method known as “Poisson Limit One Tube” (PiLOT) produces a positive result when a sample exceeds a threshold level of bacterial contamination. The Poisson Probability Distribution is the mathematical foundation of the PiLOT method. Thus, a PiLOT method protocol (PiLOT-95) with a 95% probability of a positive result when a chicken sample contains 1 CFU/g of Salmonella has a 50% probability of a positive result when a sample contains 0.2 CFU/g of Salmonella. The “Confidently Above Threshold” (CAT) method was developed to reduce the potential for false positive results. A CAT method protocol with an 80% probability of a positive result when a chicken sample contains 1 CFU/g of Salmonella has a 50% probability of a positive result when a sample contains 0.6 CFU/g of Salmonella. Eighty samples of the chicken component of NRTE breaded stuffed chicken products were prepared by inoculating with Salmonella levels between < 0.1 to 52.5 CFU/g. Each of the samples was assessed for the presence of Salmonella levels ≥ l.0 CFU/g with PiLOT-95 and CAT-80 protocols. For both PiLOT-95 and CAT-80 Sensitivity was 1.000 since no false positive results occurred. This result demonstrated the validity and feasibility of threshold methods for Salmonella in NRTE breaded stuffed chicken products. The CAT-80 false positive rate (FPR) of 0.225 was lower than the PiLOT-95 FPR of 0.500. PiLOT-95 and CAT-80 Specificities were 0.500 and 0.775, respectively. These results demonstrated that the CAT-80 protocol reduces the occurrence of false positive outcomes compared to the PiLOT-95 threshold protocol. CAT methods may provide an optimal approach for detecting chicken component samples with greater than or equal to 1 CFU/g Salmonella.