14 Food service employees and others need to be educated about effective food safety,
including purchasing of raw materials, storing, handling of foods properly, cooking foods to proper temperatures, using effective hand-washing practices, keeping food
contact surfaces clean and sanitized preventing cross-contamination Fryback 1998. The organisms of interest in this research are Salmonella and coliforms. With
respect to Salmonella, it is a major foodborne pathogen and causes a disease known as salmonellosis. Coliforms are indicator organisms; they normally enlighten to the
inspectors what state of hygiene, or sanitation condition is shown for the work area. Occurrence of coliforms could be an indication that disease-causing microorganisms like
Salmonella may likely be present as well. Hygiene and sanitation checks are carried out
to compare with microbial load especially of the indicator groups.
1.2. Objectives and benefit of this research
The objectives of this research were to 1 isolate and identify Salmonella species from three ready-to-eat RTE food outlets; 2 evaluate the hygiene and sanitation
conditions of ready-to-eat food outlets; 3 establish the coliform counts and connect their occurrence to the hygiene conditions of the three RTE food outlets; 4 find if the
amounts of coliform counts influence the occurrence of Salmonella species in the samples from RTE food outlets.
Salmonella being a common foodborne pathogen if present in the samples from
the three RTE food outlets would be an indication of possible contamination to the foods sold in those outlets. It would be beneficial to establish the occurrence of this pathogen
so as to enlighten to people that there are risks to consuming RTE foods however with proper work practices like cleanliness and neatness, treatment of infected workers, and
good employee hygiene would help to reduce the possibility of its presence in RTE foods. Many a case of Salmonella related food poisoning has been reported in the world,
and developing countries have a much higher risk. This may be due to much of the systems enabling safety for populations being not well-established due to financial
constraints or lack of information and educating people. Issues of improper sanitation increase the risk and so indicator organisms such as coliforms are a successful find from
scientists who developed this useful system for quick assessment of how safe a product may be due to the presence of these indicator organisms.
15 This research hence was carried out to determine if Salmonella species were
present in the ready-to-eat food outlets. Also, presence and count of coliforms using MPN technique in these outlets would draw attention to all the sanitation conditions of
the outlets. With the data obtained awareness and improvements of ready-to-eat RTE products can be carried out with the advantageous effects on producing safer RTE food
outlets by keeping the work areas clean, neat and attractive for the customers; more people would believe in safe RTE food products.
1.3. Hypothesis
