Salmonella Contamination: Breach in Food Safety Standards at Hotel Restaurants

There is an increasing patronage of hotel restaurants food, but the safety of such foods is always call to question because of commitanition from organisms like salmonella. Salmonellosis is a set of common foodborne diseases caused by bacteria (Salmonella spp), of which there are many variants. We conducted microbial assessment of foods served at 21 hotel restaurants in Central and Western Regions of Ghana, to determine the presence of Salmonella. Samples of cooked food were collected from the hotels in sterile containers and Ziploc bags packed into thermoregulatory flask and transported aseptically to the laboratory for analysis. Standard microbiological methods were employed for isolation, enumeration, and identification of bacteria (Salmonella). The mean bacterial count from the food samples was expressed as x10 ⁴ cfu/mL. The results were analysed using a single factor ANOVA to calculate the mean and standard deviations for food samples common to three categories of hotels, while t-Test (Two-Sample Assuming Equal Variance) was utilised to analyse samples common to two categories of hotel. The results revealed Salmonella presence in all the food samples tested from the restaurants in the hotels. Salmonella contamination of the food samples is attributed to poor personal hygiene, inadequate time and temperature management of cooked and uncooked food and other practices among the food handlers which lead to cross-contamination. Therefore, it is important to intensify training of the food handlers to strictly adhere to food safety protocols. In addition, improvement in monitoring and supervision is important to protect the health of consumers.