Incidence and Recovery of Listeria from Chicken with a Pre-enrichment Technique.

Eighty frozen chickens from four processors were purchased from retail stores in Brisbane. Forty-eight fresh chicken carcasses and 32 (16 hot and 16 chilled) wash-water samples from each of the four processors were also collected. The isolation of Listeria was achieved by a pre-enrichment procedure which allowed the recovery of injured cells. Listeria monocytogenes was isolated from 12 (15%) of the frozen chickens. Nine (11.2%) isolates were confirmed to be serotype 1 and three (3.8%) serotype 4. Fourteen (17.5%) of the frozen chickens were also contaminated by Listeria innocua . One (2.1%) sample of the fresh chickens yielded L. monocytogenes serotype 1 and five (10.4%) had L. innocua . L. monocytogenes serotype 1 was recovered from two (6.2%) samples of chilled wash water, but no Listeria were detected in hot wash water.