Carnobacterium divergens - a dominating bacterium of pork meat juice

Abstract

Nonspoiled food that nevertheless contains bacterial pathogens constitutes a much more serious health problem than spoiled food, as the consumer is not warned beforehand. However, data on the diversity of bacterial species in meat juice are rare. To study the bacterial load of fresh pork from ten different distributors, we applied a combination of the conventional culture-based and molecular methods for detecting and quantifying the microbial spectrum of fresh pork meat juice samples. Altogether, we identified 23 bacterial species of ten different families analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The majority of isolates were belonging to the typical spoilage bacterial population of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), Enterococcaceae, and Pseudomonadaceae. Several additional isolates were identified as Staphylococcus spp. and Bacillus spp. originating from human and animal skin and other environmental niches including plants, soil, and water. Carnobacterium divergens, a LAB contributing to the spoilage of raw meat even at refrigeration temperature, was the most frequently isolated species in our study (5/10) with a bacterial load of 10(3) - 10(7) CFU mL(-1). In several of the analyzed pork meat juice samples, two bacterial faecal indicators, Serratia grimesii and Serratia proteamaculans, were identified together with another opportunistic food-borne pathogen, Staphylococcus equorum. Our data reveal a high bacterial load of fresh pork meat supporting the potential health risk of meat juice for the end consumer even under refrigerated conditions.

Metagenomic assessment of the microbial diversity in ground pork products from markets in the North Central Region of South Korea

“…In addition, lactic acid bacteria, Enterococcaceae, Pseudomonadaceae, Staphylococcus, Bacillus, Carnobacterium, and Serratia species have been isolated from pork meat juice. [15] Both similarities and differences with these earlier cultural identification based studies can be noted in the current study involving whole genome sequencing molecular profiling. When metagenomic analysis was performed to identify the core microbiota in ground pork samples Pseudomonas, Carnobacterium, and Yersinia species were frequently found in ground pork as well as Lactobacillus, Photobacterium, Arthrobacter, and Shwanella species (Table 2).…”

Scientific Opinion on the update of the list of QPS‐recommended biological agents intentionally added to food or feed as notified to EFSA†

“…The species C. divergens frequently dominates the microbiota of refrigerated meat and seafood, stored under vacuum or modified atmosphere (Laursen et al., ; Leisner et al., ; Rieder et al., ). For its ability to produce bacteriocins, this species has been used in food with the aim to reduce spoilage and pathogenic bacteria (Richard et al., ; Leisner et al., ; Rihakova et al., ).…”

Phenotypic and Genotypic Characterization of Carnobacterium divergens Isolated from Refrigerated Tunisian Minced Raw Beef Meat

“…Carnobacterium divergens and C. maltaromaticum are the only bacteria frequently isolated from a large variety of products like meat [1][2][3][4][5], poultry [6,7] and pork meat juice [8].…”