Incidence of Some Pathogenic Bacteria in Fast Food Sandwiches

Abstract

In the current study, a grand total of 100 random samples of fast food sandwiches including; Shawerma, Kibda (liver), kofta (mined meat) and beef burger (25 of each) were collected from different street vendors at Alexandria Province. The collected samples were examined bacteriologically for detection of some pathogenic bacteria including Salmonellae, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus. The obtained results revealed that the incidence of Salmonellae in sandwiches of Shawerma, Kibda, kofta and beef burger was 8, 4, 4 and 8%, respectively and serotyping of the obtained isolates revealed the presence of S. Enteritidis, S. Typhimurium and S. Dublin. In addition, the incidence of Shigella was 16, 12, 8 and 20% in the examined samples, respectively and the identification of the obtained isolates revealed the presence of S. dysenteriae, S. flexneri and S. sonnei. Moreover, the incidence of Staph. aureus in the examined sandwiches was 20, 12, 16 and 12%, respectively. Finally, the incidence of B. cereus was 24, 16, 8 and 12% in the examined sandwiches, respectively. It was clear that the examined sandwiches of Shawerma and beef burger were highly contaminated by the identified bacteria compared to the examined sandwiches of Kibda and kofta. Based on results obtained in this study, it was indicated that consuming sandwiches of street vended meat products as ready –to- eat (RTE) foods, sold in many locations of Alexandria may possess a serious challenge to the public health authorities and hazardous food for the consumer so the recommended measures to overcome these microorganisms in street vended meat products sandwiches and improve their quality must be followed.