Development and application of a new method for specific and sensitive enumeration of spores of nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum types B, E, and F in foods and food materials

Peck, Michael W, Plowman, June, Aldus, Clare F ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0197-2755, Wyatt, Gary M, Izurieta, Walter Penaloza, Stringer, Sandra C and Barker, Gary C (2010) Development and application of a new method for specific and sensitive enumeration of spores of nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum types B, E, and F in foods and food materials. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 76 (19). pp. 6607-14. ISSN 0099-2240

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Abstract

The highly potent botulinum neurotoxins are responsible for botulism, a severe neuroparalytic disease. Strains of nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum form neurotoxins of types B, E, and F and are the main hazard associated with minimally heated refrigerated foods. Recent developments in quantitative microbiological risk assessment (QMRA) and food safety objectives (FSO) have made food safety more quantitative and include, as inputs, probability distributions for the contamination of food materials and foods. A new method that combines a selective enrichment culture with multiplex PCR has been developed and validated to enumerate specifically the spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum. Key features of this new method include the following: (i) it is specific for nonproteolytic C. botulinum (and does not detect proteolytic C. botulinum), (ii) the detection limit has been determined for each food tested (using carefully structured control samples), and (iii) a low detection limit has been achieved by the use of selective enrichment and large test samples. The method has been used to enumerate spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum in 637 samples of 19 food materials included in pasta-based minimally heated refrigerated foods and in 7 complete foods. A total of 32 samples (5 egg pastas and 27 scallops) contained spores of nonproteolytic C. botulinum type B or F. The majority of samples contained <100 spores/kg, but one sample of scallops contained 444 spores/kg. Nonproteolytic C. botulinum type E was not detected. Importantly, for QMRA and FSO, the construction of probability distributions will enable the frequency of packs containing particular levels of contamination to be determined.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	bacterial load,clostridium botulinum,food microbiology,food safety,polymerase chain reaction,sensitivity and specificity,spores
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Health Promotion Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Population Health
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2016 16:00
Last Modified:	06 Jun 2024 14:54
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/57566
DOI:	10.1128/AEM.01007-10

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