A Microbial Study of Minced Meat and Raw Kebabs in Some Restaurants and Its Relationship to the Cultural and Health Level of Its workers

Abstract

This study is carried out to investigate and evaluate the level of cultural and health awareness of workers in some restaurants in the city of Karbala. And the extent of their application of health conditions in preparing kebabs for consumers and its relationship to the microbial content .It was found through the questionnaire forms and the personal interviews that the health conditions weren’t applied, due to poor health awareness, and lack of knowledge of the factors of food contamination with microbes. Therefore, microbial contamination in the kebab was investigated during its manufacturing stages. The study included randomly selecting 10 restaurants in a center of the city centre and surrounding areas, the number of samples studied were 20 samples of minced meat and 20 samples of raw kebabs for the period from 1/7-28/7/2021 (total samples 160 ), the  microbial tests included, total plate count (TPC) and total coliform bacteria (TC) and Staphylococcus aureus (SA), as well as Salmonella test. The result of this study showed that TPC, TC, SA ,in  minced meat   is  10.1 - 13.7 x 10⁷ CFU / g, 11.9 - 15.1 x  10⁵ CFU / g, 5.3 - 9.1 x  10⁵ CFU / g, respectively. Salmonella test was negative in all samples. And in raw kebab   were 11.2 - 15.2 x10⁷ CFU / g, 12.6 - 16.9 x 10⁵ CFU / g, 6.1 - 10.2 x 10⁵ CFU / g, respectively.  Salmonella test was positive in 16 samples in minced meat from 80 samples, during the study period (the Percentage of contamination was 20 %). And all of kebab’s meat were negative identified or did not contain E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella , after the grilling process.When comparing these results with the microbial limits of the Iraqi standard (2006) , it was found that more than 70% of the samples contaminated exceeded the maximum limit. We also identified, through this study, the weakness of the cultural and health level of some restaurant workers with regard to preparing kebabs in the correct way.