LAUSR

Infections by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are gradually increasing in the community. There is a potential public health hazard resulting from S. aureus contamination of seafood, which is mainly due to unhygienic handling, processing and storage environments. In Poland, the limits provided in Commission Regulation (EC) No 1441/2007 refer to the presence of Escherichia coli and S. aureus in shelled and shucked products of cooked crustaceans and molluscan shellfish. This study was designed to evaluate the occurrence of MRSA in samples of fish and seafood from commercial outlets located in the Tri-City area (Poland). In this study, we investigated a 44 food samples, including fish and seafood collected from various retail outlets in the Tri-City area of Poland. The first stage of staphylococcus isolation was initial culture in Giolitti-Cantoni broth. After 24 h, if blackening had occurred at the bottom (or there was general blackening of the medium), the samples were spread plated onto CHROMagar MRSA base. The cultures were then incubated for 24 h at a temperature of 37°C. Of the 44 samples, 26 were positive for MRSA. The samples most often contaminated with MRSA were cephalopods (6/9) and crustaceans (10/15), followed by samples taken from mollusks (4/7) and fish (6/13). The correlation between the species from which the samples were obtained and the presence of S. aureus was not significant (p >0.05). The high frequency of occurrence of MRSA in these products points to the potential risk of transmission of diseases through the food chain. The results obtained are significant and useful to S. aureus risk assessment programs for aquatic products.