Yersinia enterocolitica prevalence, on fresh pork, poultry and beef meat at retail level, in France

Abstract

Y. enterocolitica is a zoonotic agent, and the third bacterial cause of human entiritis in Europe. The objective of this study was to assess consumer exposure to the pathogen Y. enterocolitica through meat consumption over a one-year period, in France. In this context, the prevalence of Y. enterocolitica was established on samples of fresh pork, beef and poultry collected at retail level in France. Of the 649 samples, 5.1% (34) were positive for Y. enterocolitica. No significant difference in prevalence between the categories of fresh meat was observed: the prevalence was 5.2 % for pork, 5.2% for beef and 5.9% for poultry meat. However, tongues of pork were highly contaminated by Y. enterocolitica (12.5%) compared to other type of meat. Although the isolation methods of Y. enterocolitica was done by a method promoting the detection of pathogenic biotypes 1B, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (enrichment ITC and streaking on CIN), only strains carrying biotype 1A were isolated. Strains of biotype 1A are considered non-pathogenic for humans. However, recent studies indicate that biotype 1A strains isolated from clinical cases have in their genomes genes known to play a role during disease. The presence of the three virulent genes inv, myfA and ystB were tested; the gene ystB being strongly related to the clinical biotype 1A. The three genes were detected for some of our strains and 71% of our isolates carried the ystB gene. Thus, these strains can be potentially pathogenic for humans.