Abstract
To investigate the cause of the outbreak of food poisoning in March, 1965, the authors planned to feed mice with the responsible instant spaghetti or the oil extracted from it and to carry out pathological examinations with these mice. The results obtained may be summarized as follows:
(1) Body weight of the mice of the test groups fed on either the responsible instant spaghetti or other samples giving unpleasant odour dropped considerably in the following ten days. All of these test animals died in 14 to 16 days.
(2) The mice receiving either 400mg of the oil extracted from the responsible spaghetti or 600mg of the oil extracted from the samples giving unpleasant odour showed a typical diarrhoea and ruffle after 24 hours and died with in 48 hours.
(3) Histological examinations of the moribund mice demonstrated in all the cases, an acute enteritis accompanied with an atrophy in the spleen.
(4) The acid and peroxide values of these oils were determined to characterize the toxic substance. The values for the oil of the responsible instant spaghetti were 33.0 and 118.1 and the corresponding figures for the oil of the samples with an unpleasant odour 26.5 and 105.8, respectively.
