Pork meat and processed pork products have been the sources of outbreaks of listeriosis in France and in other European countries during the last decade. The aim of this review is to understand how contamination, survival and growth of Listeria monocytogenes can occur in pork meat products. This study discusses the presence of L. monocytogenes in raw pork meat, in the processing environment and in finished products. The prevalence of L. monocytogenes generally increases from the farm to the manufacturing plants and this mainly due to cross‐contamination. In many cases, this pathogen is present in raw pork meat at low or moderate levels, but foods involved in listeriosis outbreaks are those in which the organism has multiplied to reach levels significantly higher than 1000 CFU g−1. In such cases, L. monocytogenes has been able to survive and/or to grow despite the hurdles encountered during the manufacturing and conservation processes. Accordingly, attention must be paid to the design of food‐processing equipment and to the effectiveness of the cleaning and disinfecting procedures in factories. Finally, the production of safe pork meat products is based on the implementation of general preventive measures such as Good Hygiene Practices, Good Manufacturing and the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point.

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Assignment of a strain to the genus Staphylococcus requires that it is a Grampositive coccus that forms clusters, produces catalase, has an appropriate cell wall structure (including peptidoglycan type and teichoic acid presence) and G+C content of DNA in a range of 3 0 4 0 mol%. The recommended minimal standards for describing a new Staphylococcus species are based on the results of phenotypic and genomic studies of a t least five independently isolated strains. They include colony morphology and the results of the following conventional tests : pigment production, growth requirements, fermentative and oxidative activity on carbohydrates, novobiocin susceptibility, enzymic activities (nitrate reductase, alkaline phosphatase, arginine dihydrolase, ornithine decarboxylase, urease, cytochrome oxidase, staphylocoagulase in rabbit plasma, heat-stable nuclease, amidases, oxidases, clumping factor, and haemolytic activity on sheep or bovine blood agar). DNA-DNA hybridization experiments may distinguish species when the difference between the binding in the homologous reaction and the binding in the heterologous reaction expressed as a percentage is less than 70%. In addition, rRNA signature sequence criteria, ribotyping characterization of the nomenclature type strain and other strains of the species, and reference strains of other species is recommended to describe the strains of the new species with sets of genetic attributes and reveal possible grouping errors. This proposal has been endorsed by the members of the Subcommittee on the taxonomy of staphylococci and streptococci of the International Committee on Systematic Bacteriology.

, stx 2-vha , and stx 2-vhb ) were concentrated in seropathotypes associated with disease, others (astA, HPI, stx 1c , and stx 2-NV206 ) were concentrated in seropathotypes that are not associated with disease. Taken together with the observation that the STEC-A group was exclusively composed of strains lacking eae recovered from seropathotypes that are not associated with disease, the "atypical" virulence pattern suggests that STEC-A strains comprise a distinct category of STEC strains. A practical benefit of our phylogenetic analysis of STEC strains is that phylogenetic group A status appears to be highly predictive of "nonvirulent" seropathotypes.