Abstract

Canned products arc becoming an impoitant part of the diet in today's fast paced life. 1 lowcver, contamination by food-boinc pathogenic bacteria and theii multiplication during storage is of serious health concern, because ol consumeis who arc ignorant ofthe expiration date on canned products I his study lheiefoie evaluated (he physicochemical and miciobiological quality of expired tomato tins Samples were purchased from various retail outlets and analysed for microbial composition 1 he samples were serially diluted in ten-folds before plating on nutrient agar plates, potato dextrose agar plates. Substantially high total viable counts were observed in samples. I he mean viable bacterial load a.mong the three sample types ranged between 3.3> lO'cfu/g and 6 8- l()'clu/g as against the 1,2x10’cfu/g obtained from the unexpired (control) sample. I he mean fungal (mould and yeast) counts ranged from 2,9-xlO'cfu/g to 3 3>. lO’clu/g while anaerobic count of spoilt canned tomato ranged from 4.6x103cfu/g to 7 (r lO’clu/g. Isolated organisms obtained from the spoilt canned tomato samples revealed four dominant bacterial genera (Pacillus, Clostridium, Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus'} with the greater proportion being Pacil/us species with a 42.1% occurrence. Percentage occurrence of Clostridium species was 21.0% while Pseudomonas occulted in 10.5%. Ofthe moulds isolated, Mucor species showed a higher percentage (60%). The result obtained from the samples showed mean pH values ranging from 3.52 to 3.95. There is also the possibility of these organisms posing food safety issues.