SURFACE SANITATION AND MICROBIOLOGICAL FOOD QUALITY OF A UNIVERSITY FOODSERVICE OPERATION

A microbiological testing and support surveillance program monitors the sanitary state of food contact surfaces and performs food audits of the Rutgers Dining Services facilities. Analysis of the data over a recent two year period revealed that unacceptable surface sanitation was correlated with the physical presence of food debris (23.4 %), water (45.9%), or both (57.8 %). Follow up testing revealed that the program was able to consistently reduce the probability of surface failure reoccurrence. Poor equipment design was often contributory to especially problematic surfaces. Lunch meat (36.4% unacceptable) and raw meat (34.1 % unacceptable) were found to be the most problematic types of food according to university guidelines. Foods failures were most frequently due to unacceptable levels of indicator bacteria including total coliforms (59.4% of failures, 15.4% of total samples), total aerobic counts (43.4% offailures, 11.2% of total samples) and Escherichia coli (24.5% offailures, 6.3% of total samples). The most common type of failure due to an unacceptable level of a foodborne pathogen was due to unacceptable levels of Staphylococcus aureus (12.6% of failures, 3.3% of total food samples.