Implication of human handling on packaged sausage rolls during sale

Abstract

In other to identify the implication of human handling of packaged sausage rolls after production, a microbiological safety evaluation was carried out on sausage rolls sold on street and in shops. Among the sausage rolls, gala purchased from street vendors has the highest bacterial load of 2.82 × 104 CFU/g and 4.3 × 106 spore/g of fungal load, followed by meaty with bacterial load of 1.71 × 104 CFU/g and fungal load of 1.6 × 105 spore/g and was least in rite sausage roll with 1.46 × 104 CFU/g and 1 × 105 spore/g bacterial and fungal loads respectively. Seventeen bacteria species were isolated from both street vended and shop sold sausage rolls, the isolates identified including: Bacillus cereus, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, Alcaligenes faecalis, Citrobacter freundii, Klebsiella ozaenae, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Enterobacter aerogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Aeromonas hydrophila, Plesiomonas shigelloides, Moraxella catarhalis, Bacillus substilis, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Aeromonas anaerogenes, Aerococcus viridans and Azomonas agilis. Five fungi species were isolated from street vended sausage rolls only. The fungal species are Penicillium notatum, Aspergillus parasiticus, Aspergillus flavus, Penicillium italicum and Gliocephalis spp. From this study, street vended samples have higher microbial contamination than shop sold sausage
rolls due to improper handling during sales.