Thursday, 22 September 2016
This factsheet explains the rod-shaped bacterium ‘Bacillus cereus’.
Bacillus cereus causes two kinds of foodborne disease: i) an intoxication due to a toxin preformed in the food and ii) an infection due to the ingestion of cells which produce enterotoxins in the small intestine.
In 2014, 12 Member States of the European Union (EU) reported 287 outbreaks caused by Bacillus toxins resulting in 89 hospitalisations and no deaths. This represented 5.5% of all outbreaks reported within the EU and is a small increase (3.2%) compared with 2013, when nine Member States reported 278 Bacillus toxin outbreaks. The overall reporting rate in the EU was 0.1 per 100,000 population.
