Abstract
Edible insects have long been consumed as part of the diet of many Asian, African and South American cultures. The study sought to determine the microbial quality of dried insects (mopane worms, termites and stink bugs) sold around Thohoyandou markets, South Africa. For the study, 45 samples of dried mopane worms, termites and stink bugs were purchased from street vendors. About fifteen samples for each dried set of insects were randomly purchased and subjected to microbial analyses such as coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, total plate count, yeasts and moulds count. The results revealed that street vendors were not following good standards of food safety and hygiene. They need training and awareness on how to handle the food products sold at the open market. During the study, we found that the mopane worms had the highest coliforms count of 1.9964±0.02 log10 CFU/g. Termites had the highest E. coli, S. aureus and total plate count of 1.9907±0.05, 2.2562±0.02 and 6.3564±1.10 log10 CFU/ g. Termites and stink bugs had the highest amount of Salmonella spp. (1.9827±0.03 log10 CFU/g). Stink bugs had the highest yeast and mould count ranging from 1.9804±0.14 to 1.9491±0.56 log10 CFU/g as compared to other insects. The outcome of this study will be used to teach vendors about good food safety and hygiene measures. The study results are also useful in determining whether these edible insects sold at the market are microbiologically safe for human consumption.
Highlights
An estimated two billion people, mostly from underdeveloped countries in Africa, Asia and South America, harvest more than 2000 different species of edible insects for human consumption
A checklist adopted from Muinde and Kuria (2005) and Samapundo et al (2015) was used to assess food hygiene practices of all fifteen street vendors selling dried insects
All the experiments were conducted in triplicates and the averages of plate counts from three replications were converted to log10 CFU/g
Summary
An estimated two billion people, mostly from underdeveloped countries in Africa, Asia and South America, harvest more than 2000 different species of edible insects for human consumption (van Huis, 2013; Hamerman, 2016; Kooh et al, 2019). Sun-drying has been used from the age of as early as 20000 BC (Bourdoux et al, 2016). This indicates that drying is one of the oldest methods used to preserve foods. It reduces water which improves the quality by reducing water activity, increases the shelf -life of dried foods and helps to reduce the microbial growth on dried foods. It is cheap, simple and inexpensive to practice. It has disadvantages of contamination due to insects, birds, rodents and other environmental factors which have negative effects on public health (Farahbakhsh et al, 2015)
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