The vehicles by which Listeria enters a food production facility are largely also sources by which Salmonella makes its way into the environment, such as through contaminated soil, fruits, vegetables, meats, etc. Once these organisms enter the production environment, they can grow, spread, and make their way into products, causing contamination.
It can be easy to pass over Salmonella as a risk in your cold, refrigerated environments seeing as those conditions do not support the growth of the pathogen. However, while Salmonella maybe not able to grow under the same refrigerated conditions that Listeria can, it does survive in them. In fact, Salmonella can survive in most conditions under which Listeria can grow, maintaining the risk for contamination and subsequently illness. Therefore, if your environmental monitoring program includes swabbing for Listeria, you might want to consider taking samples for Salmonella testing as well.
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