Food Poisoning and Pets, It's Not all about Listeria

Staph food poisoning and pets

Geni Wren, Bovine Veterinarian Magazine   |   Updated: July 11, 2011

Jenny Berner

Food animals are increasingly becoming the target for food-poisoning problems and zoonotic diseases. But we often forget about the role other animals play, including our own beloved pets and their closeness to us — and our food.I’ll never forget when I grew up as a child in the late 1960s and 70s when we’d pack up the family in our green station wagon (French poodle Amy along for the ride) and head to the Dairy Queen, and every one of us four kids let Amy have a lick off of our ice cream cone. And my dad is a veterinarian. I never remember any of us getting sick, but those were also different times when we spent our playtime out in the fields, the grass and the dirt with a variety of pets and/or livestock. We were exposed to a lot of natural microorganisms people today don't often see.
Recently Scott Weese, DVM, DVSc Guelph, Dipl. ACVIM, from the Ontario Veterinary College, Guelph, Ontario, wrote in the Worms and Germs blog about potential food Staphylococcus food poisoning from the way we intimately engage with our pets and our food, countertops, etc.
Reading Weese’s article may give people pause (paws?) for thought the next time they share their food bowl with a pet or let that cat hang around the kitchen counter and traipse across the cutting board (do you know what litterbox those cat paws have been in?). But it also shows that companion animals can be a reservoir for foodborne disease and food animals should not bear the be-all and end-all blame. Food safety takes diligence — and cleanliness — on all of our parts and cannot be targeted to a few sources as it has many avenues to find its way into our food.
Weese's article follows:
Staph food poisoning…possible pet reservoir
Scott Weese, DVM, DVSc Guelph; Dipl ACVIM, Worms & Germs blog, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph
When it comes to public health concerns about staphylococcal bacteria from pets, most of the attention gets paid to methicillin-resistant strains like MRSA. That's not surprising considering how important MRSA is in human medicine. However, staph that aren't methicillin-resistant can also be a problem since they can cause the same types of infections that resistant types can (they are just easier to treat). Another aspect that often gets overlooked is staphylococcal food poisoning.
Staphylococcal food poisoning is one of the most common foodborne illnesses and results from growth of certain strains of staphylococci in poorly handled or stored foods. If staph get into food and the food is kept at improper temperatures, the bacteria can grow. If the strain of staph that's in the food is one that can produce enterotoxins, these toxins can accumulate in the food at high enough levels to cause food poisoning when eaten. In most cases, people are probably the origin of enterotoxin-producing staph that contaminate food, but pets are another possible source.
A recent study in Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases (Abdel-moein et al 2011) looked at enterotoxigenic staph in 70 dogs and 47 cats. Swabs were collected from the mouth, nose and wounds. Nasal swabs were also collected from 26 people. They isolated enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus (strains of S. aureus that possessed genes encoding for enterotoxin production) from 10% of dogs and 2.1% of cats, as well as 7.7% of people. Most of the positive samples from pets were oral samples.
This study shows that dogs and cats can be potential sources of strains of S. aureus that cause food poisoning. Since the staph are often in the animals' mouths (and therefore presumably shed in saliva), animals should be considered possible sources of enterotoxigenic staph contamination of foods.
Prevention measures are pretty basic but should be considered, including:

• Keeping pets off kitchen counters.
• Discarding foods that pets have licked.
• Washing hands after pet contact, before handling food.
• Properly storing food, so that even if it gets contaminated with staph, the bacteria don't get the opportunity to grow and produce toxins.

Scott Weese is with the Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph.

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