Report on outbreak of pork pie poisoning at Chesterfield / Derbyshire County Council.

  • Derbyshire (England). County Council
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Report on outbreak of pork pie poisoning at Chesterfield / Derbyshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CONCLUSIONS. 21. (1) A specific actively motile bacillus was present in the pie, in the spleen and other organs of the fatal case, E.W., and in the heces of a patient R.S. (2) It was pathogenic to mice and guinea pigs, and was obtained from the bodies of animals that died as a result of the feeding and inoculation experiments. (3) From its morphological, cultural, and pathogenic characters, the bacillus belongs to the paratyphoid-Gaertner group of organisms. (4) Differentiation by means of agglutination and absorption tests shews it to be identical with the Bacillus Suipestifer. (5) That it is the cause of' the outbreak is shewn by the agglu¬ tination experiments with patients’ bloods. (6) The outbreak is undoubtedly excretal in origin, and the dis¬ covery of B. Coli and B. Enteritidis Sporogenes in the pork pie supports this statement. (7) The usual habitat of the B. Suipestifer (bacillus of swine fever or hog cholera) is the alimentary canal of pigs and other lower animals, but that it is not a natural or common inhabitant is shewn by the comparative infrequency of food-poisoning outbreaks, in spite of the liability of prepared meat foods to faecal contamina¬ tion. (8) Although no illness was noted in any of the animals used in connection with the manufacture of the pork pies, there can be no reasonable doubt but that at least one of the pigs was infected with B. Suipestifer, and that during the process of manufacture the meat or jelly became contaminated with this organism. (9) A chronic B. Suipestifer human carrier has not yet been observed, and there is no evidence to suspect this in the Chesterfield outbreak.