ESCHERICHIA COLI IN FISH
The quality of fresh fish is strongly determined for bac- terial microbiota [20]. In this context, the use of E. coli as a sanitary indicator for fish samples has been first re- ported in the 1930s [21] and since then widely applied as a microbiological quality parameter, especially on what fecal contamination is concerned [22-25].
According to Thampuran et al. [26], E. coli is com- monly associated with seafood contamination in the tro- pics, where it is encountered in high numbers. The au-thors isolated E. coli in finfish samples acquired at the retail market in Cochin (India) and, although typical E. coli O157 or labile toxin-producing E. coli were not de- tected, the isolation of strains with the ability to pro-duce hemolysis in human blood was a fact worth men-tioning.