Food Hygienic Quality of Chinese Style Fried Rice Available in Hotels, Restaurants and Take Away Outlets in the Colombo City

Sri Lanka is a famous tourist destination thus; ensuring food safety has garnered importance in public health. Chinese style fried rice are popular among consumers and the majority of them belong to the low-income category. Hence, the aim of this descriptive cross-sectional study was to detect food hygienic quality of Chinese style fried rice available in hotels, restaurants and take away outlets in the Colombo city.. Using systematic random and cluster sampling technique 25 eating houses were selected in the Colombo city limits in which prepared and available for sale. Two hundred Chinese style fried rice samples were collected comprising 35%of vegetable, 29 % of chicken, 18% of seafood, 9% egg, 5%of beef and 3.5% of mixed variety respectively. Aerobic Plate Count was carried out using USFDA Manual of Food Quality Control 1992. Detection and enumeration of coliforms, faecal coliforms and E.coli were carried out using SLS516:part3:1982 standard. In the present study Aerobic Plate counts of 39.50% samples were > 105 cfu/g. Furthermore, 24.50% of the total fried rice samples (200) tested contained ≥ 1.100 Coliforms/g of rice followed by 16% contained ≥ 1.100 Faecal Coliforms/g of rice. Alarmingly, E.coli was detected in 39.0 % of the fried rice samples tested and the highest percentages of varieties contaminated were egg, vegetable and mixed. The services of PHIs who render their services on food safety are strongly recommended to improve the microbial quality of ready-to-eat food available for sale in food establishments of the Colombo city