Hygienic quality of food stuff in catering services and restaurants in Iran

Hygienic quality of food (microbial and chemical quality) is very important to public health. This study was aimed to determine the microbial contamination and chemical quality of prepared food including cooked meat, cooked rice, cooked kebab, roast chicken and cooked fish in catering services and restaurants in Qazvin province from Iran. Randomly 200 food stuff samples were collected from the catering services and urban restaurants and consequently analyzed according to American public health association (APHA) and food and drug administration (FDA) standard methods. In addition, the chemical quality and outward status of food were assessed. The findings indicated that level of fat and moisture had not significant difference between same samples in various locations. Nevertheless, Coked Kebab samples had the highest of fat level at the sampling locations (5.12 ± 1.23% and 5.92 ± 0.93%), The highest and lowest levels for moisture content amounts were observed in restaurants cooked meat and kebab samples. Microbial analysis showed that the meat and fish had the highest total count (TC) and Coli forms count (6.12 ± 0.99 and 4.91 ± 0.37 Log cfu/g respectively) (P 0.05). None of samples were contaminated with Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Improving methods for cooking and food processing, avoid of the secondary bacterial contaminations, continuous monitoring in food processing can be great importance as preventive measures of food contamination.