Introduction:

Bacillus cereus is recognized as a pathogen that causes food poisoning. It is a facultative aerobic metabolism bacterium capable of forming spores, which allows it to survive pasteurization and heating even by the gamma irradiation used to reduce pathogens in food.

Objective:

To study the presence of Bacillus cereus and its diarrheal toxin in rice and ready-to-eat cereals, flours, and starches in school restaurants in Colombia.

Materials and methods:

We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study of ready-to-eat foods distributed in school restaurants in the departments with the most and the least notification of foodborne diseases to the surveillance system.

Results:

A total of 479 samples were collected from eight departments, 74 municipalities, and 363 school restaurants, 63% of which were rice samples and 37%, starchy food samples; 9% of them tested positive for Bacillus cereus. In 91% of the samples that tested positive, the bacterium was isolated with the presence of the diarrheal toxin.

Conclusions:

In all the departments with B. cereus in the samples, the factors directly related to food-borne diseases were the handling of raw materials and the poor thermal treatment of food. Strengthening surveillance by stimulating research and reporting on outbreaks of foodborne diseases is important to improve the quality of information, to develop communication, prevention and intersectional coordination and manipulation measures, as well as to take the necessary actions to guarantee the safety of food and to eliminate the risk factors that may contribute to this problem.

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