Low Occurrence of Clostridium difficile in Fecal Samples of Healthy Calves and Pigs at Slaughter and in Minced Meat in Switzerland

Clostridium difficile is a cause of diarrhea and colitis in humans. The increase of incidence and severity of C. difficile infections in humans in past years is due, at least in part, to the emergence of more virulent strains (PCR ribotypes 027 and 078). Recent studies describe the occurrence of hyp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of food protection 2010-05, Vol.73 (5), p.973-975
Main Authors: HOFER, E, HAECHLER, H, FREI, R, STEPHAN, R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal productions
Animals
Beef
Biological and medical sciences
Cattle
Clostridioides difficile - classification
Clostridioides difficile - isolation & purification
Clostridium difficile
Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous - etiology
Enterocolitis, Pseudomembranous - microbiology
Feces
Feces - microbiology
Food
Food Contamination - analysis
Food industries
Food Microbiology
Food safety
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hogs
Humans
Infections
Inflammatory bowel disease
Meat
Meat products
Meat Products - microbiology
Pathogens
Pilot projects
Prevalence
Ribotyping
Swine
Switzerland - epidemiology
Terrestrial animal productions
Toxins
Vertebrates
Virulence
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Summary:Clostridium difficile is a cause of diarrhea and colitis in humans. The increase of incidence and severity of C. difficile infections in humans in past years is due, at least in part, to the emergence of more virulent strains (PCR ribotypes 027 and 078). Recent studies describe the occurrence of hypervirulent strains in ground meat products. Therefore, food animals and food need to be assessed for their possible role as vectors of C. difficile to humans. In this pilot study, fecal samples of 204 calves and 165 pigs, as well as 46 minced meat products were investigated to determine the occurrence of C. difficile in farm animals at slaughter and in ground meat products at the retail level in Switzerland. C. difficile was isolated from only one fecal sample of a calf. All samples from pigs and ground meat were negative. Further characterization revealed that the isolated strain harbored genes for toxins A and B as well as binary toxin, and belonged to the ribotype 078. Based on these results, low occurrence of C. difficile in farm animals at slaughter and retail ground meat in Switzerland is postulated. However, further studies are necessary to confirm these preliminary data and to assess future trends.
ISSN:0362-028X
1944-9097
DOI:10.4315/0362-028x-73.5.973