Assessment of Microbiological Quality of Ready to Eat Food Served in Ships Along Warri, Koko and Port Harcourt Wa ter Ways,
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Date
2022-03-11
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
. Online Journal of Microbiological Research
Abstract
Background: Food borne outbreaks have been associated with sourcing unsafe food.
Therefore, the first preventative strategy should be to source safe food. Even if the sourced food is
safe, measures need to be put in place to ensure that it remains safe during the transfer, storage,
preparation and serving activities that follow. An understanding of the ship food supply and transfer chain will help to illustrate the points at which the food can become contaminated en route to
the point of consumption. Objectives: The study was conducted in selected sea port in the core
Niger Delta to assessed the microbiological quality of food served at different ship galley to crew
and passengers and compered it to standard. Methods: Samples of food were taken from three (Port
Harcourt Area one (PHSP), Warri (WSP) and Koko (KSP)) seaports within the South-South zone for
laboratory analysis to uncover food spoilage microorganisms capable of causing disease outbreak
among ship which could result to Trans border diseases. Eleven samples of different ready to eat
food were collected from the locations, which included cooked rice; fried fish, irish potato porridge,
vegetable soup, griki, pepper soup, fried irish potato, salad and bread were collected randomly. The
samples were prepared and analyzed using standard procedures. Mean viable counts of aerobic
and anaerobic bacteria were determined, ranging from (13×103cfu/g to 78×104 cfu/g) for ready to
eat food. Results: Based on the finding KSP I, KSP J and KSP K food samples had the highest bac terial contamination on food while WSP F, WSP G and WSP H food samples had the least with the
following isolates Salmonella spp, Nocardia spp, Shigella spp, Listeria spp, Bacillus cereus, Leuconostoc spp,
Acinetobacter spp, Acetobacter spp, campylobacter spp, Clostridium spp and Vibrio spp which revealed
that the isolates were susceptible to any of these antibiotics Septrin, Chloramphenicol, Gentamycin,
Tarvid, Streptomycin, Reflacin, Augumetin, Ceporex, Nalidixic acid, Ampicillin, Ciproflox, Penicil lin and Erythromycin. Conclusion: Thus, ships operators and regulatory body are expected to take
all practicable measures to ensure that they do not receive unsafe or unsuitable food and maintain
adequate food temperature at all time.
Description
Generally, foods raised concern with respect to their potential food poisoning out breaks due to improper handling and unhygienic practices among food vendor and re ports had shown that number of illnesses, hospitalizations trans border diseases and
deaths are from contaminated foods on ships, the most common causes of food borne
illness are norovirus, Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter spp., Clostridium perfringens and
Staphylococcus aureus. Due to its high case fatality rate, Listeria monocytogenes has also be come a much-noted cause for concern [4, 6].
Food is the fuel of life. Without food, humans cannot survive as such it is important
for us to know where our food actually comes from. The food system is the technical,
social, and economic structure that supplies food to the population. It is a complex, dy namic, and international chain of activities that begins with production and harvesting of
raw agricultural commodities on farms, ranches and in fishing operations and moves to
value added processed and preserved products and then to retail food stores and food
service establishments (restaurants and institutions) where these foods are prepared, mer chandised and sold to consumers [5, 16, 17, 18]. As such, the focus of this research work
was on assessment of microbiological quality of ready
Keywords
Citation
Adiama, Y. B., Sawyerr, O. H., Olaniyi, O. A., Fregene, A. F., Alabede, M., & Raimi, M. O. (2022). Assessment of Microbiological Quality of Ready to Eat Food Served in Ships Along Warri, Koko and Port Harcourt Wa ter Ways, Nigeria. Online Journal of Microbiological Research, 1(1), 1–7.