ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the great involvement of home-processed foods in outbreaks of botulism. In general, foodborne botulism is caused by eating improperly preserved food in which Clostridium botulinumhas grown and produced toxin. The etiologic agent of botulism was first isolated in 1896 by Emile Pierre Marie van Ermengem, a professor of bacteriology at the University of Ghent in Belgium. In infant botulism, spores of C. botulinum are ingested; they colonize the intestine, germinate, and form botulinal toxin in the intestinal lumen. Conventional botulism food poisoning, or botulism, results from consumption of food that has supported growth of C. botulinum and elaboration of its deadly neurotoxin. Spores prepared from cultures freshly isolated from a botulism outbreak produced toxin more readily in the implicated food than spores of laboratory stock cultures. Botulism as a disease was first recognized in the United States in 1899, and since then records of reported outbreaks have been maintained.