Essentials of Enumeration and Identification Methods for Microorganisms Which Interfere with the Safety of Foods with Particular Reference to Simplification Avoiding the Use of Nonconventional Instrumentation

Staphylococcus aureus and related staphylococci in foods: ecology, proliferation, toxinogenesis, control and monitoring

“…A second factor that influences the numbers of organisms recovered is whether a resuscitation treatment (Mossel & van Netten 1984;Ray 1989) is used. In many instances staphylococci are severely injured, so that recovery is erroneously low if a specimen is plated directly on many currently used selective media (Idziak & Mossel 1980;Mossel et al 1985;Isigidi et al 1989;van Netten et al 1990). Such cells have to be included in counts as when they have recovered from injury their enterotoxinogenicity is unimpaired (Fung & van den Bosch 1975;Smith et al 1984).…”

“…Unlike the situation with the detection of salmonellas in foods, where a universally applicable method has yet to be devised (Beckers et al 1987;DAoust 1989;Perales & Audicana 1989), there is a strong body of opinion that the medium of Baird-Parker (1962) provides an excellent basis for the detection and enumeration of Staph. aureus and related staphylococci in foods (de Waart et al 1968;Rayman et al 1978Rayman et al , 1988Idziak & Mossel 1980;van Doorne et al 1981van Doorne et al , 1982Bouwer-Hertzberger et al 1982;Mossel et al 1985;van Netten et al 1990). Some slight modifications have been necessary, but we believe that there is no reason to continue the search for different media, while attachment to media that were inferior to begin with (White et al 1988) should be discouraged.…”

“…Procedures based on solid medium repair (SMR) (Fig. 6) were found to eliminate such shortcomings (Mossel et al 1985;Isigidi et al 1989;van Netten et al 1990).…”

A centenary of academic and less learned Food Microbiology Pitfalls of the past and promises for the future

“…More recently all sorts of handy miniaturization techniques were introduced, including microtubes, microtitre plates, polytropic diagnostic tubes, small culture medium surfaces layered onto plastic slides contained in plastic tubes, advanced membrane filter procedures, multipoint inoculation devices for the application of 10-15 small diagnostic discs to Petri dishes. These developments have greatly facilitated, rationalized and economized the microbiological monitoring of foods and the identification of isolates (Mossel et al, 1983(Mossel et al, , 1985.…”

“…Particularly promising seem two recent developments: i) impedometry relying on the use of selective media; ii) study of the velocity of and pathways followed in nitrate reduction and glucose dissimilation when the microbial population of specific foods is incubated in selective media containing these substrates (Mossel et al, 1985).…”