Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Veterinary Faculty, Regional Campus of International Excellence Campus Mare Nostrum, University of Murcia, Murcia 30100, Spain.
(ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1088-1695 [C.C.P.]).
J Food Prot. 2021 Feb 1;84(2):310-314. doi: 10.4315/JFP-20-256.
Raw meat and meat products contaminated with Clostridioides difficile could be a vehicle for spreading community-associated C. difficile infection. This study was conducted to determine the occurrence of C. difficile in pork and poultry meat samples (n = 325) from retail establishments and in edible giblet samples (n = 36) from a poultry processing plant in Murcia (southeastern Spain). C. difficile was isolated after selective enrichment from 2% (6 of 361) of the samples, all of which were from the poultry processing plant. These isolates were recovered from 17% (6 of 36) of the edible chicken giblets, i.e., 28% (5 of 18) of the gizzard samples and 6% (1 of 18) of the liver samples. All six C. difficile isolates were negative for toxin A and B genes by PCR assay. These findings indicate that C. difficile can survive in the gastric acid of the chicken gizzard and could be transmitted to other meat products. However, the very low prevalence of C. difficile in the tested samples indicates that retail meat may not be an important source for transmission of C. difficile to humans.
受艰难梭菌污染的生肉和肉类产品可能是传播社区获得性艰难梭菌感染的媒介。本研究旨在确定零售点猪肉和禽肉样本（n=325）以及穆尔西亚（西班牙东南部）一家家禽加工厂食用禽胗样本（n=36）中艰难梭菌的发生情况。从 2%（6/361）的样本中通过选择性增菌分离出艰难梭菌，所有样本均来自家禽加工厂。这些分离株来自 17%（6/36）的可食用鸡胗，即 28%（5/18）的胗样本和 6%（1/18）的肝样本。所有 6 株艰难梭菌分离株的 PCR 检测均为毒素 A 和 B 基因阴性。这些发现表明艰难梭菌可以在鸡胗的胃酸中存活，并可能传播到其他肉类产品。然而，在测试样本中艰难梭菌的低流行率表明零售肉可能不是艰难梭菌传播给人类的重要来源。
