Italy Rejects Three Shipments of Frozen Poultry Meat From Brazil at the Border Over Salmonella Minnesota and Salmonella Drogana

On October 19, 2026, Italy notified the European Union's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) of the border rejection of three shipments of frozen poultry meat from Brazil due to the presence of Salmonella. The controls were carried out by the Genoa border control post, which reports to the Italian Ministry of Health. Salmonella Minnesota was identified in two of the shipments and Salmonella Drogana in the third. Each consignment weighed 25,200 kilos, so in total more than 75 tonnes of meat were held and did not reach the European market.

The samples were taken on August 21, September 4 and September 10, with the goods held at the border, and the analysis confirmed the presence of the bacterium. The measures were re-dispatch or destruction of the cargo in two cases and refusal of entry with official detention in the third. RASFF classified the risk of all three notifications as not serious and recorded that the product had not been placed on the market. All three are based on the EU's general food law regulation (Regulation (EC) 178/2002).

Salmonella is a common contaminant of raw poultry meat: the bacterium colonizes the intestines of birds and passes to the meat during slaughter and cutting. Freezing preserves it without destroying it, and only thorough cooking eliminates it, so the risk in the kitchen and in industry lies in the handling of the raw product and in cross-contamination. Salmonella Minnesota is a common serovar in Brazilian poultry farming and appears regularly in European controls of poultry meat imported from that country. The EU microbiological criterion for fresh poultry meat (Regulation (EC) 2073/2005) refers to Salmonella Enteritidis and Typhimurium, while these notifications are based on the general regulation; even so, the presence of Salmonella was enough for none of the shipments to enter the market.

Brazil is one of the world's largest poultry meat exporters, and each border rejection means the exporter bears the cost of re-dispatching or destroying an entire consignment. For Latin American plants that sell to the European Union, the case reinforces the value of testing each batch before shipment. TAAG's Ampliora 1.1 kit detects Salmonella spp. by real-time PCR and its datasheet includes meat matrices such as raw chicken and frozen beef burger; the association is indirect because the notification does not specify the poultry species and frozen poultry meat is not listed as a specific matrix. A positive result is presumptive and must be confirmed, with identification of the serovar, by the reference method.