The use of a new phage set for typing poultry strains ofstaphylococcus aureusobtained from seven countries

Abstract

1. Eighty per cent of poultry strains of Staphylococcus aureus tested from French, Belgian, English, West German, Japanese and Argentinian sources were typable using a set of typing phages isolated in this laboratory. Strains from Bulgaria, however, with few exceptions were not typable with this phage set. 2. Strains isolated from lesions generally resembled those from apparently healthy poultry. 3. The existence of two distinct Staph. aureus biotypes on poultry was confirmed by isolates from six of the countries; one of these biotypes closely resembled Staph. aureus variety gallinae as described by Witte et al. (1977).

Incidence, origin and significance of staphylococci on processed poultry

“…aureus from animals are refractile to phages of the international human set and hence phages specific to poultry strains have been sought (Smith et al 1961;Shimizu 1977;Gibbs et al 1978b). Such phages were used to type strains isolated in several European countries from both healthy and diseased birds (Shimizu 1979;Thompson et al 1980b), and were found to be relatively specific for poultry strains (Hajek & Horak 1978). However, Thompson et al (1980b) found that whereas 80% of poultry strains from France, Belgium, England, West Germany, Japan and Argentina could be typed with a phage set developed in Northern Ireland, most of those received from Bulgaria could not.…”

“…aureus isolated from a Dutch chicken processing plant, Notermans et al (1982) found that 95.6% of 905 strains were typable with either the international human phage set or with an avian set comprising 20 different phages. By contrast, strains isolated by Adams & Mead (1983) from three turkey processing plants were often untypable by either the human set or the avian phages used by Thompson et al (1980b), but up to 98% of those isolated from different sampling days could be typed with the Dutch set (van Leeuwen, personal communication). A separate set of phages for typing staphylococci from turkeys with synovitis was described by Smith et al (1961).…”