Street Vended Food Contamination in Kumasi, Ghana

Street foods are foods and beverages that are ready to be eaten and usually sold on the streets. This
practice is common in the heart of cities in Ghana providing valuable services by supplying easy
access of food to the public at a low cost. Street vended foods (SFV’s) are preferred as a result of
their distinctive tastes, convenience and their dietary significance in the traditions of communities’.
The sale of street foods also offers business opportunities for emerging industrialists while making a
substantial influence on the financial system of many developing countries. However, the safety of
these foods is not assessed, in particular, the evaluation of the handling that can result in a
contamination. In this study, we assessed the microbial contamination due to the handler involved in
the processing of the ready-to-eat-foods (RTE) and with the use of a survey; researchers highlighted
the critical points in order to assess the hygiene practices observed. The study recruited 45 vendors
using the random sampling method. Water samples were collected aseptically from the container
where the food handlers use in washing their hands during the production of RTE. A structured
questionnaire and an observational checklist were used to gather environmental and personal
hygiene data from the vendors. Samples were analysed for the detection of different microbiological
parameters including food-borne pathogens and 16 resulted positive (37.21%) for Escherichia coli, 12
(27.91%) for Salmonella spp., 8 (18.60%) for Staphylococcus aureus and 7 (16.28%) for Klebsiella
spp. Unacceptable practices such as using bare hands to collect money from consumers and. serve
food at the same time and selling in unhygienic open spaces were observed with these SFV’s. These
results highlighted the importance of different management of the critical points in the RTE production,
including guidelines for vendors and hygiene practices, which will provide information to policy makers
on dealing with SFV’s in order to guarantee the safety of these businesses.