Microbial Evaluation Of Ready-To-Eat Snacks Sold Within Umuahia Metropolis:- Maurice, Prince C

ABSTRACT Street foods play an important role in people's daily food options and their regular nutritional requirements are dependent on these foods, the emergence of food poisoning pandemics around the world has raised public awareness of food safety and demanded better control of processing conditions to ensure safe and high quality products. This study evaluated the microbial contaminants associated with different ready to eat snacks sold within Umuahia. A total oftwenty (20) snacks namely: Eggroll Doughnut Meatpie and plantain chips were purchased from different vendors within Umuahia city. The samples were transported to the laboratory for microbial investigation. Isolation and identification of microbes were done by standard microbiological techniques. A total of 34 microbial isolates comprising of 5 different bacteria species and 2 different fungi species were isolated from the snacks samples purchased from the vendors. The details ofthese isolate comprises ofEscherichia coli, Klebsiellapneumoniae, Coagulase Negative Staphylococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, Shigella species, Aspergillus niger and Fusarium oxysporum. The total bacterial plate count ranged from 0.8 x 105 to 5.9 x 106 cfii/g; the coliform plate count ranged from 0.9 x 105 to 5.4 x 106 cfu/g and Total fungal estimated ranged from 1.2 x 105 to 6.1 x 106 cfu/g. It was observe that Escherichia coli is the most a frequently occurring isolates (23.5%) followed by Aspergillus niger (17.6%), Klebsiella pneumonia and Fusarium oxysporum (14.7%) Staphylococcus aureus was found to be the least number of isolate with (5.9%). The antibiotic sensitivity test reviewed that Gentamycin (89.5%) is the drug of choice following the fact that it showed high rate of sensitivity to the bacterial isolates tested, this is followed by Ofloxacin (87%), Ceftriaxone (52.6%) etc. In the same sequence, the fungal isolates were susceptible to Fluconazole (100%) and Nystatin (54.4%) whereas Ketoconazole showed the •east percentage susceptibility of (27.3%) to the fungi isolates. The presence of food borne pathogens on ready to eat snacks sold within Umuahia has public health implications. Therefore, it is advisable that an awareness campaign should be carried out to educate the major role players in the snacks industry on the approach of food safety management and safety of the consumed snacks.