From the figures it would appear right to concentrate most attention upon salmonellas, staphylococci, and Clostridium welchii. It is necessary also to consider briefly other organisms known to cause food poisoning. Of these by far the most interesting, as well as the most deadly, is Clostridium botulinum, the organism that caused the tragic disaster at Loch Maree in August 1922, when all of eig...

This study describes a multiplex PCR assay developed for the detection of Staphylococcus aureus enterotoxin types: SEA, SEB, SEC, SED, and SEE presented in the literature as classical. The method was then used to analyse the presence of genes encoding these enterotoxins in .S aureus strains isolated from raw milk. A total of 237 raw milk samples were used in the study and 77 (32.5%) of them wer...

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the occurrence of Staphylococcus aureus in milk produced in 37 farms located in the regions of Ribeirão Preto and São Carlos, state of São Paulo, Brazil. Two-hundred and eight samples of milk from individual cows showing subclinical mastitis, and 37 samples of bulk tank milk were analyzed. S. aureus strains were detected in 18 (7.3%) milk sampl...

Preliminary attempts were made to explain the association of staphylococcal food poisoning with cooked rather than uncooked meats. The abilities of various meats to support the growth of an enterotoxigenic staphylococcus, and the production of enterotoxin A, were determined. The production of enterotoxin was detected by means of serological procedures. Little or no growth was obtained when the ...

A large-scale outbreak of food poisoning caused by consumption of skimmed milk powder contaminated with staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) occurred in Japan. No viable Staphylococcus aureus was detected in the skimmed milk powder, however, sea and nuc genes of S. aureus were detected in it by PCR. The number of S. aureus in skimmed milk powder was estimated by quantitative real-time PCR.

Clostridium perfringens is an important anaerobic pathogen causing food-borne gastrointestinal (GI) diseases in humans and animals. It is thought that C. perfringens food poisoning isolates typically carry the enterotoxin gene (cpe) on their chromosome, while isolates from other GI diseases, such as antibiotic-associated diarrhea, carry cpe on a transferable plasmid. However, food-borne GI dise...

In 1995 several outbreaks of food poisoning in humans occurred in Iceland, that were traced to salmonella contamination of singed sheep heads. This prompted us to study the prevalence of salmonella infection in sheep and to trace where and how infection might have occurred. Faecal, intestinal contents and tonsillar samples were collected in the spring and autumn from sheep on 50 farms in the so...

September is National Food Safety Education Month. One of CDC’s food safety objectives is to raise awareness about healthy practices to prevent food poisoning. Every year in the United States, an estimated one in six persons (48 million persons) become ill, and 3,000 die from eating contaminated food (1). Some persons are at higher risk for foodborne illnesses (food poisoning) or might experien...

Incrimination of vacuum-packaged smoked fish in outbreaks of botulism has raised questions about the safety of this process in comparison with other methods of packaging foods. It has been suggested, for example, that Clostridium botulinum may grow better in a vacuum-packaged product than in one that is packaged without vacuum. To evaluate this possibility, sliced bologna was inoculated with sp...

One of the major challenges of functional genomics is to unravel the connection between genotype and phenotype. So far no global analysis has attempted to explore those connections in the light of the large phenotypic variability seen in nature. Here, we use an unsupervised, systematic approach for associating genes and phenotypic characteristics that combines literature mining with comparative...