Arda Alara Uludağ

Consuming food contaminated with harmful microorganisms poses a significant public health risk, often occurring on indoor food contact surfaces like cutting boards in home kitchens. The study aimed to experimentally determine the survival of Salmonella on commonly used cutting board surfaces (glass, wood, polyethylene) and its potential to cause cross‐contamination of food samples (salami) over varying intervals and contact times. Salmonella bacteria persisted on polyethylene and glass cutting boards for up to 4 h, whereas on wooden surfaces, they were detected only up to 2 h. The transfer rates of bacteria to salami were found to vary depending on the type of board material and bacterial strain, with wooden boards demonstrating the lowest transfer rates. Additionally, the transfer rate increased proportionally with longer contact times. The study highlights that all types of cutting boards have the potential to transfer bacteria to food, although wooden boards showed lower transfer rates compared to polyethylene and glass surfaces.

Listeria monocytogenes that the most common human listeriosis agent is one of 21 species of the Listeria genera. In fact, the mortality rate of listeriosis is higher than that of the more common foodborne pathogens such as Vibrio species or Salmonella Enteritidis. This study was aimed to determine the L. monocytogenes contamination in different minced meat samples. In this study, 100 minced meat samples purchased from different butchers in 11 districts of Istanbul between December 2018 and November 2019 were examined for the presence of L. monocytogenes. Isolates were molecularly confirmed for the presence of the iap and hlyA gene regions. It was determined that 21 biochemically defined isolates were susceptible to tetracycline and ampicillin, while resistant to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, penicillin, cefaclor, and vancomycin. In addition, it was determined that only 16 of these 21 isolates were L. monocytogenes in terms of iap and hlyA gene regions. L. monocytogenes incidence in minced meat sold in Istanbul is low (17%), we believe that these contamination rates indicate a significant risk to public health due to cross-contamination and raw consumption of minced meat.