Bacteriological analysis of street-vended fruit juices available in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand

BACKGROUND: A descriptive study was carried out due to absence of knowledge of relation between hygiene status of vendor and extent of contamination while simultaneously adding to the pool of similar studies, which would in turn help government formulate an appropriate policy. METHODOLOGY: A sample size of 80 fruit juices were collected from 55 vendors and cultured using CLED agar; relevant biochemical tests were run and isolates confirmed using Chromogenic Agar CPS3Id. The CFU of isolates obtained from one vendor were averaged to obtain average CFU for the vendor. The vendors were interviewed and investigator's observations were also recorded. Both were used to formulate an ingenious hygiene score scale, using which vendor hygiene score (VHS) was calculated. VHS and average CFU for the vendor were statistically analyzed and Spearman's rho was calculated along with the scatter plot. RESULTS: Klebsiella sp. (59.05%) and non-Candida albicans (14.28%) are the major bacterial and fungal contaminant respectively. The median VHS is -9, which is unsuitable for consumption according to HSS. Spearman's rho was -0.736, suggestive of a statistically significant negative nonlinear correlation between VHS and extent of microbial contamination in street-vended fruit juices. CONCLUSION: The plethora of microbial contamination of street-vended fruit juices is a lucrative dimension for research in fruit juice microbiology to improve general public health, reduce disease mortality and morbidity, reduce economic losses, and to protect the general public from the risk of bioterrorism by stringent surveillance in background of limited employment opportunities and constrained livelihoods of the vendors.