## 4 Discussion  
In recent years, different diagnostic approaches have been developed for detecting various food pathogens, including innovative molecular methods.  
_Salmonella_ infections have been declining constantly since the implementation of EU control measures in poultry in 2007, although the data for 2016 showed a relevant increase of 11.5% in the number of cases compared to the previous year [1], underlining the need for continued risk management plans both at the state and at the food industry level.  
In this context, the use of alternative methods, such as the \"_Salmonella_ spp.\" kit that can rapidly identify pathogenic bacteria, is of great relevance, provided they are validated against the standardized reference method as stated by ISO 16140-2:2016 [15].  
The results obtained by the validated method in the comparative studies were equivalent to the microbiological reference method, hence providing a valid alternative to the cultural method. The relative sensitivity was found to be 100% for all the food typologies examined, confirming the absence of inhibition by different kinds of substrates. Moreover, the kit is characterised by a 100% specificity, as it does not amplify the other species tested, and it is inclusive of at least 25 serovars of _Salmonella_ evaluated. At the detection limit of 0.4 CFU/g, the LAMP kit showed false-negative results for 4 out of 100 samples; but, even though there is a lower sensitivity than the traditional methods, it still has the advantage in terms of speed of execution and ease of use.  
During this study, we also compared the LAMP kit with another commercially available diagnostic method: Real-Time PCR in raw poultry samples. The results indicate that all the methods were in good agreement, even if a limitation of this study is the scarcity of positive results (i.e., 1 sample) that could hinder a more deepened evaluation. No problems of PCR inhibition were found using the internal amplification control provided in the kit; hence, in negative samples, the absence of pathogenic microorganisms was effectively determined.  
Another feature of this study is that out of the 105 poultry samples screened for the presence of _Salmonella_ spp., only 1 positive sample occurred, with a prevalence of 0.95%. Samples were bought in different retail markets in order to have a more realistic representation of Sicilian poultry contamination. In fact, poultry flocks, particularly chicken, are frequently colonized with _Salmonella_ without any detectable symptoms by horizontal and vertical transmission at the primary production level [21].  
In European countries, the percentage of _Salmonella_-positive samples from fresh broiler meat is quite higher (4.85%) [22], even if, besides retail, also samples from slaughterhouse and processing plants are included.  
Although our prevalence is rather low, this should be taken as an additional motivation for the continuous control of this pathogens, as an effective implementation of control measures could still decrease the prevalence, producing safer food. Constant monitoring is mandatory to avoid new difficulties, such as the increasing antibiotic resistance in _Salmonella_ spp. that has become a severe issue for public health at a global level [23].