Association of food safety knowledge and practice with microbiological contamination in street vended fruit juice: A cross-sectional study in Chattogram metropolitan city

Abstract

In Bangladesh, the cost, taste, and warm, humid climate all encourage street juice consumption. However, practices for making street juices safely have come under threat, which has led to microbial growth in the juices. The purpose of this study is to look into the practices and cleanliness of the street sellers as well as the microbiological load. A pretested questionnaire was used to evaluate 71 roadside vendors' awareness of food safety practices. For the purpose of microbiological quantification, representative samples of 10 lemon juice and 10 sugarcane juice were obtained from 20 merchants out of the 71 respondents. The range of Total Plate Count (TPC) and Total Coliform Count (TCC) for lemon juice was 8.58×102 -4.38×104 cfu/ml and 6-34 cfu/ml respectively. For sugarcane juice the counts were 1.24×104 -8.34×104 cfu/ml and 17-54 cfu/ml respectively. Some food safety and hygiene practices and knowledge showed significant associations with the microbial load in the fruit juices including lack of safety knowledge on food poisoning (70%), presence of microorganism on dirty hands (70%), elevation of contamination on food by insanitary surroundings (70%) reluctance to wearing gloves (75%), poor waste management facilities (73%). Therefore, the study recommends focused food safety training to minimize microbial contamination.