Food poisoning associated with pumilacidin-producing Bacillus pumilus in rice

Food poisoning caused by other Bacillus species than B. cereus has been described, but the toxins involved have rarely been isolated. Endospores will survive heat treatment and will germinate and multiply in cooked foods producing toxins under appropriate conditions. We describe a small food poisoning outbreak where three people became ill after a dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Acute symptoms including dizziness, headache, chills and back pain developed during the meal, and a few hours later they got stomach cramps and diarrhoea which lasted for several days. Cooked, reheated rice was the prime suspect of the food poisoning, and from the rice large numbers of Bacillus pumilus were isolated. The isolated B. pumilus strain was found to produce a complex of lipopeptides known as pumilacidins with the highest amounts produced at 15 degrees C. This is the first report on isolation of a pumilacidin-producing B. pumilus strain from food implicated in food poisoning and characterization of the organism and the toxin complex involved.