Determinación de coliformes totales y E. Coli en muestras de lechuga expendidas en cuatro mercados de la ciudad de Cuenca

Abstract

Worldwide, there is a trend towards an increment of consumption of fruits and vegetables, motivated by a growing concern of adopting more equilibrated diet. However their image healthy food excludes them from of all suspicion when health problems occur due to food ingestion The objective of this thesis was to determinethe presenceof total coliforms andE.coliin lettuce var. Iceberg that is expended in four markets of Cuenca city. The obtained results were an useful contribution to the Department of Hygiene and Control of Markets of the Illustrious Municipality of Cuenca. This was a longitudinal descriptive study. In total, 96 samples in duplicate were analized. and the determination of total coliforms (CT) and Escherichia coli (EC) was performed by the technique PetrifilmTM. The degree of contamination of the lettuces was tolerable because only 1% of the samples were contaminated with no acceptable levels of total coliforms (>104 UFC/g) and 6,25% with no acceptable level of E. coli (>102 UFC/g),according toInternationalStandardsCollectionMicrobiologicalFoodand AlliedMoragasPaulet al. In addition, no significant relationship was observed between the sale place (market) and the place of production with the grade of contamination of lettuces. Although a low prevalence of contamination found, , the presences of indicators of fecal contamination suggests that the lettuces might have an inadequate microbiological quality, representing a source of ETAs, if the contamination is not controlled through good practices of hygiene.