Effects of animal alimentary passage on the heat resistance of Clostridium perfringens.

The resistance to heat, as measured by D values and phantom thermal death time curves, was observed to increase for one of three strains of Clostridium perfringens type A subsequent to animal passage. Animal passage was accomplished by the force-feeding of germ-free mice with bacterial suspensions of the organism, followed by the force-feeding of additional gnotobiotic mice with the contaminated feces. For the one strain in which an increase in heat resistance was noted, the result could not be attributed to mouse feces per se, since the presence of sterile germ-free mouse feces in a suspending medium did not protect C. perfringens spores from elevated temperature destruction.