I. Greiserwilke et R. Fries, METHODS FOR DETECTION OF VIRAL CONTAMINAT IONS IN FOOD OF ANIMAL ORIGIN, DTW. Deutsche tierarztliche Wochenschrift, 101(7), 1994, pp. 284-290
Contamination of foods of animal origin with pathogenic human viruses
may occur during handling or through polluted water. Most of these vir
uses are pathogens originating from the human gastrointestinal tract.
They can be transmitted by the consumption of contaminated food and of
ten cause disease. A survey is given of DNA- and RNA-viruses that may
occur as contaminants of foods. In addition, the classical methods for
detecting viral contaminations in foods are summarized. They are base
d on the effects after virus inoculation of cell cultures. Besides the
fact that these methods are not economic and time consuming, they do
not permit detection of some of the most important foodborne gastroent
eritis viruses. The possibility of replacing these methods by detectin
g the viral genomes using hybridization and polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) is discussed.