Pre-cooked tuna meat has the potential to be contaminated with
enterotoxin-producing S. aureus during the production of canned
tuna products. This study demonstrates that both albacore and
skipjack tuna meat can support growth of enterotoxin-producing
S. aureus. However, it required at least 7 h of incubation at 37 C
and 10 h of incubation at 27 C to allow the counts of S. aureus to
increase >3 log CFU/g in tuna meat. No enterotoxinwas detected in
samples incubated at 37 C for 12 h or at 27 C for 16 h. All samples
became spoiled before enterotoxin was produced.