Contamination of Street Food by Salmonella in Chittagong City

The study was conducted to determine the contamination of Salmonella for different types of street foods in different places of Chittagong city area. A total of 76 shops from where 120 food samples of ten types were collected. Microbiological examination of Salmonella was done after dividing the foods into two categories of dry and wet foods where overall about 28% samples were positive. In case of wet food, salad shows the highest contamination of 58% flowed by water, chicken raw meat and raw milk makes up 50%, 42% and 33% respectively. For wet food, vegetable role and egg chop show the same 25% contamination where kabab and beef stick were not contaminated. A chi-square (χ2) test was used to examine the equality of observed proportions for each item of food where significant difference among the observed proportion for Salmonella (Chi-square = 82.67; p-value<0.01) for different items of food were observed and an odds ratio (OR) was measured of association between an exposure and an outcome where the probability of contamination of Salmonella in dry food was lower than wet food (OR=0.17 and CI: 0.07 to 0.44). The comparatively high bacteria in wet samples indicated contamination from water, practice of inadequate hygienic measures, mishandling, improper storage, inadequate cooking and above all unhygienic condition of the retail shops. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jfstn.v8i0.11758 J. Food Sci. Technol. Nepal, Vol. 8 (81-83), 2013