Bacteriological quality of ready-to-eat foods sold on and around University of Ghana Campus

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the microbial quality of ready-to-eat foods being sold in the open (street foods) and those from restaurants on the university of Ghana campus. A total of 27 foods were sampled from the 5 sites. Four microbiological parameters, namely Aerobic Colony Count (ACC), total Enterobactereacea (EC), presence of Escherichia coli and other Enterobacteriaceae and the presence of Salmonella sp. and Shigella sp. were used. Forty eight percent (13/27) of the foods sold had ACC values within acceptable limits, that is <104 cfu g-1 whiles 52% (14/27) had ACC values above acceptable limits and therefore, unsatisfactory for consumption, 59.3% had EC values within the acceptable limits whiles 40.7% had EC above the limit. Nine different bacterial species were isolated from the foods sampled. These were E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Streptococcus sp., Enterobacter cloacae, Bacillus sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Proteus sp., Streptococcus agalactiae and Enterococcus faecalis. On comparing the microbial qualities from the two sectors we found no difference in their microbiological qualities using student's t-test analysis (t-test< t-value: 0.397<2.06). The level of microbial contamination in some food samples both the open market and restaurants were above the acceptable limits. Therefore, present findings call for a more stringent supervision by the public health department of the university to protect the university community from future occurrence of food poisoning.