OCCURRENCE OF LISTERIA IN HOT AND COLD SMOKED SEAFOOD PRODUCTS

Over a one-year period, 258 samples of smoked fish products were obtai ned from retail outlets in Newfoundland and processed for Listeria. Of these, 142 were hot smoked and 116 cold smoked, and the samples compr ised of nine species of fish. The Canadian FDA listeria isolation prot ocol consisted of a two-stage enrichment followed by plating on select ive isolation media, Oxford, and LPM. An additional selective medium, PALCAM, was also used. Listeria spp. were isolated from 43 of 258 (16. 7%) samples processed in all, with hot smoked products yielding 25.4% (36/142) of the isolates, and cold smoked products yielding 6% of the isolates (7/116). Among the nine species tested, cod had the highest r ate of Listeria contamination at 46.7%. Of the 43 Listeria spp. isolat ed, 18 (41.9%) were L. innocua, 13 (30.2%) were L. welshimeri and 12 ( 27.9%) were L. monocytogenes.