Yersinia enterocolitica contamination of pig tonsils, carcasses and feces in one French slaughterhouse

Pig is considered to be the main animal reservoir of human pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica strains, which could contaminate meat during the slaughtering process. Two sampling campaigns were lead in one slaughterhouse to obtain prevalence data for Y. enterocolitica during winter on tonsils, feces and carcasses from 23 batches of 5 pigs sampled and analyzed during campaign 1 (10/2009-03/2010) and from 9 batches of 5 pigs for campaign 2 (11-12/2010) . Results showed a high frequency of positive pigs with 12,3% and 13,6% of either positive tonsils or feces in campaigns 1 and 2 respectively. The inter batches prevalence was 34,8% in campaign 1 and 55,5% in campaign 2. On the 20 positive pigs found, 8 and 15 were respectively positive only on tonsils or feces, and 3 pigs only were positive both on tonsils and feces. Despite the unexpected high detection rate on feces, no carcass was found to be positive. The importance of Y. enterocolitica at slaughter level is confirrned with 12,6% [8,3 to 18,7%] of positive pigs in winter and 89% ofisolated strains belonging to the pathogenic biotypes 4/0:3,2/0:9 or 3/0:5,27.