Outbreak Signals Shift in Bacteria

A deadly bacterium at the centre of a growing food-borne outbreak may have figured out how to get around the best sanitation practices at Canada's meat-processing plants, one of the country's top food microbiologist says.

Rick Holley of the University of Manitoba says Maple Leaf Foods Inc. likely uses the best practices to make sure its meat products are safe, and the company didn't catch the listeria contamination that has led to one of the country's largest ever food recalls.

"Maybe the organism that we're looking at right now in this outbreak might be adapted to some peculiar way to have a higher tolerance to the sanitation activities, to the sanitation agents that are being used. That would be unusual, but it's possible," said Holley, who chairs an international panel of experts on food safety management systems.

The team of 10 charged with food safety at the Toronto plant takes 3,000 swabs annually and analyzes them at the plant's in-house microbiology laboratory, looking for bacteria like Listeria monocytogenes, which can be deadly if they cling to food products and multiply as they sit on store shelves.

In this case, a government inspector stationed at the same plant also did not detect any gaps in the company's sanitation protocols that allowed the bacterium to grow; the cooking process kills listeria, but unlike most organisms, it likes salt and nitrate and can grow at refrigeration temperatures.

"We need to look very carefully at the effectiveness of what we consider to be acceptable programs in addressing this particular organism," said Holley.

Source: Calgary Herald