| The soft cheese Minas frescal is one of the most popular cheese in Brazil, which is typically manufactured in small dairy farms under unsatisfactory hygiene conditions. To assess the risk involved in consumption of this cheese, virulence markers were investigated in 330 Escherichia coli strains isolated from 30 Minas frescal cheeses inspected by official government agency (SIF - serviço de inspeção federal), from 50 cheeses not inspected by SIF and 31 cheeses not inspected by SIF with spice added, all of them collected in the southwest of Minas Gerais State. The E. coli isolates were screened for the presence of Shiga toxin-encoding (stx 1 and stx 2), intimin (eae) genes and for the presence of (pap, sfa, afa) genes related to adhesion in epithelial cells.... |
