Quantitative risk assessment of staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) in pork in metropolitan Bangkok, Thailand

Staphylococcus aureus (SA) food poisoning is caused by the intake of staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) produced during SA growth in contaminated food. To better evaluate the risk of SA intoxication, the relationship between SE dose and SA intoxication as a dose response (DR) model in the hazard characterization of risk assessment is needed. The objectives of this study were to propose a best-fit DR model based on SE doses in the outbreaks (secondary data) using the principle of maximum likelihood and to assess the risk of SE in pork through probabilistic models. From the goodness-of-fit test, the deviances of exponential, beta-Poisson, and logistic regression model were 5.66, 5.66, and 3.41, respectively. The best-fit DR model was the logistic regression model with the parameters q1 and q2 of 2.90 and 0.97, respectively. The uncertainty of parameters of DR model was represented by 95% confidence contour and the comparison DR curves of the best-fit and 95% likelihood-based confidence limits for the logistic regression model. The mean annual risk estimates of SE intoxication in pork of the Bangkokian population was in the range of 5.7 × 10−2 and 9.0 × 10−1.