I can't say its 'specialist advice' but I wouldn't have thought the fundamentals are any different from non resistant staph aureus. This is a known food poisoning bacteria BUT critically its found on everyone pretty much all the time. This is why there is a need to wash hands before handling food. The main point of infection is into cuts etc. which is why it is frequently associated with wounds in a hospital or care environment. Once beyond the skin and into tissue it can get nasty in a way that it can't when it is merely outside the skin. So cuts/wounds etc. on your individual and those they may contact might be my focus. But this is still not fundamentally different from normal SA infections.... On food, and under the right conditions, it produces a toxin which is then what makes a person ill upon eating it. As I said, not specialist advice on MRSA, but I'm not sure I see that its clinical 'methicillin resistant' status makes a huge difference to food. I couldn't find much online in a 5 minute targeted search to back up or disprove these comments e.g. is MRSA more perpetual than normal SA on food?

OK, so it can cause food poisoning, but this is as Xavier says just the same as normal Staph aureusis. It won't colonise people from food, most cases of MRSA infection are from existing colonies on people's own skins, and they get there from dirty hospital wards (much cleaner now which is why the incidence is dropping), not from food provided normal safe food procedures are followed, John

I refer you to REGULATION (EC) No 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs,2004 Chapter X paragraph 2 “No person suffering from, or being a carrier of a disease likely to be transmitted through food or afflicted, for example, with infected wounds, skin infections, sores or diarrhoea is to be permitted to handle food or enter any food-handling area in any capacity if there is any likelihood of direct or indirect contamination…”. So unless someone has been diagnosed as having an MRSA infection or carrying the bacterium, exclusion, from a LEGAL perspective, would seem to be unnecessary. Reading the FSA’s Food Handlers: Fitness to Work Regulatory Guidance and Best Practice Advice 2008 one comes to the same conclusion. From a RISK perspective the CDC, USA offer the following reassurance on the MRSA as a food borne infection. “Most MRSA cases are skin and soft tissue non-life-threatening infections that are spread between people in the community through skin-to-skin contact….. to date, there have not been any documented cases of people getting MRSA from eating food that contains MRSA….” (http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/organisms/mrsa-and-food-products.html. Page last updated: June 27, 2011) And in the Royal college of Physicians 2008 publication Infected food handlers: Occupational aspects of management. A national guideline it is concluded that “poor hygiene practices, in particular hand washing, by food handlers at mass catering events, were identified as a cause of outbreaks of Staphylococcus aureus…” and that in their study “there was no evidence that food handlers with skin conditions affecting hands, arms or face, boils, styes, cut or septic fingers, or discharges from eyes, ears, gums or mouth, were associated with infecting food”