title: Occurrence of Enterobacter sakazakii in food production environments and households.
abstract: Enterobacter sakazakii occasionally causes illness in premature babies and neonates. Contamination of infant formulae during factory production or bottle preparation is implicated. Advice to health-care professionals focuses on bottle preparation, but the effectiveness of prevention depends on the degree of contamination and contamination sites, which are generally unknown. To keep contamination to a minimum in the finished product depends on knowledge of the occurrence of E sakazakii. We used a refined isolation and detection method to investigate the presence of this micro-organism in various food factories and households. Environmental samples from eight of nine food factories and from five of 16 households contained E sakazakii. The widespread nature of this micro-organism needs to be taken into account when designing preventive control measures.
authors.affiliation: Wageningen University, Laboratory of Food Microbiology, PO Box 8129, 6700 EV, Wageningen, Netherlands. Chantal.Kandhai@wur.nl
authors.forename: M Chantal
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Kandhai
authors.forename: Martine W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Reij
authors.forename: Leon G M
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Gorris
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Guillaume-Gentil
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Schothorst
mesh_terms: D044083:Cronobacter sakazakii / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004756:Enterobacteriaceae Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D004866:Equipment Contamination / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005516:Food Microbiology; D005525:Food-Processing Industry / Q000592:standards*; D006798:Housing / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007225:Infant Food / Q000382:microbiology; D007231:Infant, Newborn