Question

John took home some leftover ham and potato salad from a picnic, reheated the ham on the stove, ate it, and got sick two hours later. John thought the heating made his food safe because it would have killed any bacteria present. He didn't know that __________ produces a heat-stable toxin.

Answer 1

Answer:

Staphylococcus aureus

Explanation:

S. aureus is a toxin producer and even though the bacteria can be destroyed with heat, its toxin is heat stable, this means that it can survive after heating producing food poisoning. This kind of poisoning occurs in foods that require hand preparation, like the potato salad or ham in the example, especially because in the example those food were at room temperature, in the picnic, allowing the S. aureus to produce the toxin.

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