An Institutional Outbreak of Food Poisoning Possibly Due to a Streptococcus. 20

Abstract

Streptococci have been found in foods implicated in food poisoning outbreaks, 1 , 2 but the evidence that these organisms were the etiologic agent rests only upon animal feeding experiments. 1 In the outbreak here reported green hemolytic streptococci were isolated from the sausage epidemiologically implicated. Green hemolytic streptococci were also isolated from an unopened can of sausage from the same lot as that involved in the outbreak, and this sausage, when eaten by a human volunteer, produced symptoms of food poisoning.

The outbreak involved 75 out of 182 boys who had eaten a Sunday night meal at which Vienna sausage had been served. The other foods eaten by the boys could be ruled out on epidemiological grounds, and the water supply, from deep artesian wells, was not implicated. The sausages, taken from 6 large (No. 10) cans, were mixed in a container and served without heating. No abnormal appearance, odor or taste was noted. It seems probable, from the fact that less than half of the boys became ill, that the contents of only one or two of the cans were contaminated.

Nausea, vomiting, colicky pains and diarrhea developed in most cases in 4 or 5 hours, but several of the boys were not ill until 12 hours after the supper. All recovered within 24 hours of onset of symptoms.

Three sausages left over from the supper were examined in our laboratory. Two of these contained large numbers of slowly growing, green, pleomorphic streptococci. The organisms were killed by heating to 60°C. for one hour and to 85° for 15 minutes. No organisms of the Salmonella group were found when Endo and eosin methylene blue plates were streaked with the sausage. Four unopened cans of sausage with the same code marking were later examined.