ABSTRACT

Food borne disease outbreaks linked with Ready to eat foods have been associated with various foodborne pathogens .The initial microbiological load on Ready to eat food ingredients is important, however, factors such as handling, processing, storage and display may influence the microbiological load of Ready to eat foods at the point of sale. The antimicrobial susceptibility  pattern of microorganisms isolated from ready- to eat- foods sold in Umuahia Metropolis for analysis, Ten (10g)  of food sample was  blended and homogenized in 90 mL sterile distilled water (10-1 dilution). Further tenfold serial dilution of the resultant homogenates was made to obtain 10-3 dilution respectively. From this dilution, aliquots of 0.1 mL was inoculated in replicate plates of different media using the spread plate technique .Nutrient agar (Oxoid) was inoculated for total aerobic count and Eosin Methylene Blue agar was used as a selective medium for the growth of the coliform bacteria and the mates were incubated at 37°C for 24-48 h. Colonies were counted at the end of the incubation period and expressed as Log CFU/g. Pure cultures of isolates were obtained by repeated subculture on nutrient agar and was  stored on slants at 4°C until characterized. Bacterial isolates was identified based on colonial morphology, microscopy and biochemical tests. The Ready to eat food samples used in this study were five (5) samples purchased from five different locations. The total viable count of bacterial population in all Ready to eat food samples were in the range of 1.43x106 to 4.5x106cfu/g. The total coliform count ranged from 0.9 x105 to 6.7 x 105 . The frequency of occurrences of bacteria isolated Ready to eat food samples showed a total of Sixteen (16) bacteria isolates belonging to five genera were obtained from Ready to eat food samples and identified as Staphylococcus spp., Escherichia coli, Proteus spp., Bacillus spp., and Klebsiella spp., based on their biochemical reaction. It showed that Proteus spp. 5 (31.3%) was most predominant bacterial isolates associated with Ready to eat food. This was followed by Escherichia coli 3 (18.8%), Bacillus spp. 3 (18.8%) and Staphylococcus aureus 3 (18.8%) Klebsiella spp. 2 (12.5%), was least predominant. The antibiotics susceptibility profile of the bacteria isolates showed that E.coli 28mm was more susceptible to the antibiotic drugs tested than everyother isolates. In conclusion, this study presented the level of microbial spoilage and contamination status of ready to eat food meat sold in different restaurants in Umuahia, Abia State and the role o uch contaminated meat in causing food poisoning amongst other foodborne related illnesses.