Assessment of bacteriological quality of ready to eat food vended in streets of Silchar city, Assam, India

A total of 37 street vended food samples were examined for bacterial and the colony forming units counts ranged from 4.5 × 10⁵ to 1.12 × 10⁶. The isolates were identified as Escherichia coli (37.5%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (3.57%), Staphylococcus aureus (14.20%), Salmonella sp. (5.36%), Klebsiella sp. (10.71%), Shigella sp. (19.64%) and Enterobacter sp. (8.93%) respectively. All the 56 isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin while their susceptibility to the other drugs varied. These findings demonstrated that the ready-to-eat foods vended in Silchar city constitute an important potential hazard to human health and provision of health education to the vendors would improve quality of street foods.