Sanitary Investigation on Microbial and Heavy Metals of Grilled Fish Sold in the Night Street Market of Daloa (Ivory Coast)

The quality of food sold in the street is a major public health concern. This research was conducted to study the sanitary quality of grilled fish sold in the streets of three districts of Daloa. Seasoned and unseasoned grilled fish were collected in 3 districts of Daloa, namely Commerce, Soleil and Tazibouo. A total of 150 unseasoned and 150 seasoned grilled fish were collected and analyzed for the detection and enumeration of Enterobacteriaceae, Staphylococcus aureus and fungal flora. We also tested for the presence of heavy metals such as lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg) and zinc (Zn). The antibiotic resistance of S. aureus was also checked. The results showed that Enterobacteriaceae represented the highest level of microbial load in the samples of seasoned grilled fish from the 3 districts. Total coliform levels ranged from (7.05 ± 2.1) x 103 colony-forming units (CFU)/g to (4.1 ± 1.9) x 105 CFU/g and from 2.8 ± 3.3 x102 to 3.4 ± 2.1x103 CFU/g for thermotolerant coliforms. The presence of heavy metals showed higher values in seasoned grilled fish than in unseasoned grilled fish. The highest values of heavy metals are Al (1.98±0.120 mg/kg), Pb (1.46±0.23 mg/kg), Cu (0.7±0.1 mg/kg), Hg (0.40±0.201 mg/kg) and Hg (0.9±0.201 mg/kg). The microbiological quality of both types of fish samples was unsatisfactory. The presence of S. aureus resistance was noticed with 80% resistance to vancomycin, lincomycin, gentamycin and erythromycin but all strains tested were sensitive to imipenem.