Listeria monocytogenes in Traditional Ready‐to‐Eat Dry Meat Products From Zagreb, Croatia: Occurrence and Genotyping
Contamination of ready‐to‐eat (RTE) foods with Listeria monocytogenes represents a significant public health concern, particularly due to the limited data available on its prevalence in traditional Croatian RTE products. This study is aimed at determining the prevalence of L. monocytogenes in traditional dried RTE meat products sampled from local markets in Zagreb, characterizing the genomic features of the isolated strains, and assessing their potential public health implications. A total of 50 RTE meat products, including Slavonian sausage, dry meat products, and garlic sausage, were collected and analyzed using standard cultural methods, followed by biochemical confirmation and serogroup identification with multiplex PCR. Whole‐genome sequencing (WGS) was employed to determine clonal complexes (CCs), sequence types (STs), and the presence of virulence‐associated genes. L. monocytogenes was detected in 22% (11/50) of the analyzed samples, of which 63.63% (7/11) were isolated from Slavonian sausage. Among the confirmed isolates, Serogroup IIa was the most prevalent (54.54%). WGS analysis revealed the presence of seven distinct CCs, of which CC9 (n = 3), CC37 (n = 2) and CC121 (n = 2) were the most common. One of the strains was identified as CC1, which is considered hypervirulent. Single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis demonstrated that two strains identified as CC121 and two strains identified as CC9 were highly related (seven SNP differences in each). Overall, these findings provide new insights into the presence of L. monocytogenes in traditional RTE meat products in Zagreb and highlight a potential health risk for consumers.