Determination and Identification of Enterobacteriaceae in Street Vended Foods in Karachi, Pakistan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3923/pjn.2015.225.228Keywords:
Fast foods, microbial contamination, unhygienic conditionsAbstract
Food borne diseases are an increasingly recognized problem involving a wide spectrum of illnesses caused by bacterial contamination of food. Enterobacteriaceae poses potential human health problems and is mainly transmitted through consumption of contaminated foods. Karachi is one of the biggest and thickly populated city of Pakistan where majority of the people consume cheap foods prepared in unlicensed food selling points. The objective of the present study was to determine the total Enterobacteriaceae load in various fast foods sold directly to consumers in the streets of Karachi. A total of 27 different food items were collected from street vended foods and processed for the recovery of Enterobacteriaceae load through culturing method and biochemical characterization. Out of the 27 samples, 13 food samples did not show the growth of Enterobacteriaceae, while the remaining 14 samples were heavily contaminated with gram negative bacteria. From the present study, it can be concluded that majority of the fast foods sold in the street restaurants of Karachi Pakistan is highly contaminated and not fit for human consumption.
References
Barro, N., A.R. Bello, A. Savadogo, C.A.T. Ouattara, A.J. Ilboudo and A.S. Traore, 2006. Hygienic status assessment of dish washing waters, utensils, hands and pieces of money from street food processing sites in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). Afr. J. Biotechnol., 5: 1107-1112.
Bohaychuk, V.M., G.E. Gensler, R.K. King, J.T. Wu and L.M. McMullen, 2005. Evaluation of detection methods for screening meat and poultry products for the presence of foodborne pathogens. J. Food Protect., 68: 2637-2647.
Estrada-Garcia, T., C. Lopez-Saucedo, B. Zamarripa-Ayala, M.R. Thompson, L. Gutierrez-Cogco, A. Mancera-Martinez and A. Escobar-Gutierrez, 2004. Prevalence of Escherichia coli and Salmonella spp. in street-vended food of open markets (tianguis) and general hygienic and trading practices in Mexico city. Epidemiol. Infect., 132: 1181-1184.
Fuentes, M.A.F., E.O. Morente, H. Abriouel, R.P. Pulido and A. Galvez, 2014. Antimicrobial resistance determinants in antibiotic and biocide-resistant Gram-negative bacteria from organic foods. Food Control, 37: 9-14.
Ghosh, M., S. Wahi, M. Kumar and A. Ganguli, 2007. Prevalence of enterotoxigenic Staphylococcus aureus and Shigella spp. in some raw street vended Indian foods. Int. J. Environ. Health Res., 17: 151-156.
Gogus, U., 2012. Effects of pressurization on some contamination flora in beef pate. J. Food Sci., 77: M550-M559.
Glynn, B., S. Lahiff, M. Wernecke, T. Barry, T.J. Smith and M. Maher, 2006. Current and emerging molecular diagnostic technologies applicable to bacterial food safety. Int. J. Dairy Technol., 59: 126-139.
Medina, E., C. Romero, M. Brenes and A. De Castro, 2007. Antimicrobial activity of olive oil, vinegar and various beverages against foodborne pathogens. J. Food Protect., 70: 1194-1199.
Mendonca, A.F., T.L. Amoroso and S.J. Knabel, 1994. Destruction of gram-negative food-borne pathogens by high pH involves disruption of the cytoplasmic membrane. Applied Environ. Microbiol., 60: 4009-4014.
Paterson, D.L., 2006. Resistance in gram-negative bacteria: Enterobacteriaceae. Am. J. Med., 119: S20-S28.
Teplitski, M., A.C. Wrigh and G. Lorca, 2009. Biological approaches for controlling shellfish-associated pathogens. Curr. Opin. Biotechnol., 20: 185-190.
Worcman-Barninka, D., M.T. Destro, S.A. Fernandes and M. Landgraf, 2001. Evaluation of motility enrichment on Modified Semi-solid Rappaport-Vassiladis medium (MSRV) for the detection of Salmonella in foods. Int. J. Food Microbiol., 64: 387-393.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2015 Asian Network for Scientific Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
