Evaluation of ready to eat sashimi in northern Portugal restaurants

The number of traditional Japanese restaurants has increased in Portugal throughout the past few years. This type of restaurants can reveal some food safety issues when the food safety plans and good hygiene rules are not efficiently implemented. m of this study was to evaluate some of the microbiological and physicochemical characteristics of sashimi served at different restaurants in Northern Portugal, in order to determine whether or not the sashimi was safe for consumption. one samples were collected from 23 restaurants. The main result was that 63.93% of the analysed samples were classified as unsatisfactory due to the high levels of mesophiles, Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, moulds and yeasts measured. The obtained results are indicative of the need to improve food safety systems based on HACCP principles.