Bacterial Contaminants of New Unused Disposable Food Packs Used in Commercial Area of Gombe State University

Aim: Consumable items frequently get contaminated with bacteria harbored by their packaging materials. These bacteria result in food-borne diseases when consumed along with the food by susceptible individuals, leading to illnesses and possibly death of these individuals.

Study Design: The study was designed to determine the presence of bacterial contaminants in new unused disposable food packs used in commercial area of Gombe State University.

Place and duration of study: This study was carried out in the department of microbiology, Gombe state university between March, 2018 and June, 2018.

Methodology: 30 disposable food packs were collected using simple random sampling method. Sterile swab sticks were used to swab the interior portion of the packs inside a disinfected glass cupboard, the swabs were serially diluted to tenth fold. Spread plate method was used to inoculate the samples on a nutrient agar plates and incubated at 36oC for 24hours. Viable count method was used to enumerate the number of colonies formed, and the bacteria were identified based on their macroscopic characteristics, Gram’s reaction, microscopy, and standard biochemical tests. Disc diffusion method was used to determine the sensitivity of these isolates to some antibiotics.

Results: Out of the 30 samples, 23 samples were positive for bacterial growths with discrete CFU/ml ranging from 3.0×105 to 5.9×105, these bacteria were identified to be Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Bacillus spp. and Streptococcus spp. The sensitivity test results revealed that all the isolates were susceptible to chloramphenicol, augmentin, ciprofloxacin, and ampicillin, with the exception of S. aureus which was found to be resistant to ampicillin.

Conclusion: These disposable food packs have been shown to contain notable amounts of these bacteria, and so proper sanitation, such as rinsing in boiled water should be ensured before using the food packs.