Evaluation of the safety of domestic food preparation in Malaysia.
Food-handling practices were studied in 119 and 158 households, respectively, in an urban and a rural community in Peninsular Malaysia. Hazard analyses, including microbiological analysis of foods, were carried out in two households in each community and in a house that prepared food for distribution in the urban area. Kitchen hygiene was generally acceptable, although rated "poor" in some instances in the rural area. Food prepared for lunch was usually sufficient for dinner also, the leftover items being stored at ambient temperature until required. In the house that prepared food for distribution, breakfast was prepared during the evening, stored at ambient temperature overnight, and reheated before sale the next morning. There was a local preference for cooking food at temperatures close to boiling point; this reduced the numbers of vegetative cells but not those of spores. In some stored foods the populations of Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus and mesophilic aerobic bacteria increased, the last-mentioned reaching spoilage levels. Reheating reduced the populations of proliferating bacteria in most foods to acceptable levels but would not have destroyed heat-resistant enterotoxins. Because of their importance in combating acute bacterial foodborne disease, the control of the temperature and time factors during the cooking and storage of food should receive special attention in education on health and food safety.
Hazard Analyses of Foods Prepared by Inhabitants Along the Peruvian Amazon River.
Hazard analyses of food preparation practices were conducted in two households in Indiana (a settlement along the Peruvian Amazon River), in a household in a cluster of about a half dozen houses up river, and in three households in Belen (a district near Iquitos), Peru. These analyses consisted of watching all steps of the operation, recording temperatures throughout all these steps, and collecting samples of food and testing them for common foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms. Foods prepared included rice, plantains, yuca, dry fish, fresh fish, beef, and chicken. During cooking, foods attained temperatures of at least 93.3°C; they usually boiled. Such time-temperature exposure would kill vegetative forms of foodborne pathogenic bacteria, but not heat-resistant spores. When cooked foods were leftover, they were kept either on tables or on the unheated stoves or grills on which they were cooked. During this interval, at the prevailing ambient temperature and high humidity of the jungle region, conditions were such that considerable microbial growth could occur. Time of exposure, however, limited counts to the 105-106 level. In the evening, foods were only mildly reheated, if reheated at all, so temperatures were not attained in the center regions of the food that would have killed microorganisms that had multiplied during the holding period. Hence, the primary critical control point is holding between cooking and serving, but cooking and reheating are critical control points also.
Machakos project studies agents affecting health of mother and child in a rural area of Kenya. XXIII bacterial contamination of foods commonly eaten by young children in Machakos, Kenya.
A simplified method, the Agar Immersion Plating and Contact (AIPC) slide technique was applied for the bacteriological examination of children's dishes and drinking water in Machakos District, Kenya. A total of 214 samples, collected from 106 households, were examined for degree of colonization by Enterobacteriaceae (E) and Staph. aureus (ST). Fourty four percent of the dishes and two percent of the water samples were unsafe with respect to Enterobacteriaceae. In 12% of the dishes and none of the water samples Staph. aureus occurred at levels above the threshold of acceptability. Colonization increased with storage time. Implications of these results in relation to diarrhoea morbidity patterns among young children are being investigated elsewhere.