STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS AND STAPHYLOCOCCAL FOOD INTOXICATIONS. A REVIEW

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Abstract
Dairy products have been associated with several rather large outbreaks of staphylococcal food poisoning. These include eight related outbreaks in England and 19 in Puerto Rico which involved dry milk, an outbreak that affected people over a widespread area of the United States caused by Cheddar cheese, and a 200-case outbreak traced to Cheddar cheese consumed in an Iowa institution. These and other outbreaks of staphylococcal food intoxications are reviewed in this paper. Surveys which have been conducted to determine the incidence of staphylococci in dairy foods are also discussed. These studies show that it is not uncommon for raw milk and cheese to contain detectable numbers of coagulase-positive Staphylococcus aureus. Finally, information is presented on the behavior of staphylococci in dairy products. Most of the work deals with growth of and enterotoxin production by S. aureus in milk and cheese. Growth of staphylococci in these foods is favored by the presence of low numbers of other organisms and is increasingly restricted as the pH decreases.

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