“…Later RT-PCR assays were designed and tested with both BoNT-producing and non-toxin producing clostridia for use in detecting botulinum neurotoxin genes in food and clinical samples, and for environmental sampling ( Akbulut et al, 2004 ; De Medici et al, 2009 ; Fach et al, 2009 ; Hill et al, 2010 ; Kirchner et al, 2010 ). Currently, these assays are commonly used in animal botulism outbreak investigations and environmental screening related to prevention of animal botulism cases ( Souillard et al, 2014 , 2017 ; Skarin et al, 2015 ; Masters and Palmer, 2021 ; Nguyen et al, 2022 ; Park et al, 2022 ). They are also useful when screening environmental samples as potential sources for both infant and foodborne botulism ( Shin et al, 2007 ; Sachdeva et al, 2010 ; Grenda et al, 2018 ; Maikanov et al, 2019 ), and today several standardized PCR assays ( Anon, 2013 , 2021 ) are being used in diagnostic and research laboratories for detection of bont genes in clinical and environmental samples, and contaminated foods.…”