The Bacteriological Status of Five Selected Street Vended Cooked Foods in Calabar, Nigeria

Street vended cooked foods, an integral part of urban economy in the development world, have been implicated in the transmission food borne diseases. To assess the bacteriologic quality of street- vended foods, 260 samples of ready to eat foods such as rice (100), Garri (88), Yam (20) Beans (36) and fufu (16) were collected over a period of one month from 78 street vendors encountered in Watt market, Marian market and University of Calaba, all in Cross River State , Nigeriar. Inspection of food preparation and vending areas was also carried out with aim of determining their hygienic conditions. Standard methods were used to determine aerobic plate count (APC) as well as spore counts in the food samples. Significant colonies isolated from the highest dilution showing growth of all samples were characterized to genus level. About 132 isolates belonging to 5 genus recovered from aerobic plates count of 260 food samples. These included coliform bacteria 44 (33.4%) Staphylococcus. aureus 36 (27.3%), Bacillus cereus 28 (21.2%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa 16 (12.1%) and Proteus mirabelis 8 (6.0%). There was no significant difference (P>0.05) in the occurrences of Bacterial agents by sample location. The predominance of coliform bacteria as contaminants in street vended foods in this study implies that poor hygiene may be a significant problem during preparation and vending of such foods. The contamination of food is preventable, although prevention requires a number of control efforts along the food chain from production to consumption. Close observation through personal inspection of food vending areas, methods of food storage and other food vending facilities confirmed that food hygiene was highly compromised among the food vendors.