Socio-economic profile of street food vendors and microbiological quality of ready-to-eat salads in Lomé

Rapid urbanization leads many inhabitants of our young cities to adopt collective food for their daily nutritional needs. This situation may be a risk for consumers due to microbial contamination from street environment and bad practices related to hygiene. The present study aimed to correlate socioeconomic profile of street food vendors and the microbiological quality of ready-to-eat (RTE) vegetable salads served by food shops in Lomé. The data were gathered from 45 food shops owners using semi structured questionnaires. The microbiological quality of 69 RTE vegetable salads purchased from food shops was also assessed using the standardized routine methods adopted in the West African Economic and Monetary Union countries. The results showed that the street food sector is dominated by females, and 71.11% of them attended school. They lacked training on food hygienic and sanitary practice, and personal hygiene was not observed. Salmonella spp. was not detected in any of the samples evaluated, but almost 25% of the samples were contaminated by S. aureus. The percentage of samples positive for indicator of food safety lack germs like Total aerobic bacteria, Total coliforms, Thermotolerant coliforms were 100, 100 and 37.68 respectively; corresponding to conformity rates of 14.49, 11.59 and 81.16 respectively. As for Aerobic sulfite reducing bacteria, Yeast and Mould, the percentages were respectively 11.59, 78.26 and 72.46 with conformity: 92.75, 68.11 and 94.20. The level of the microbial contamination of the RTE salads collected from collective eating places in Lomé may present a potential health hazard to consumer. In this regards, regular inspections of food premises and education of food vendors has been recognised as one of the measures to ensure improvement of the quality of street foods.