Detection of  Staphylococcus Aureus in Chicken Macaroni Salad

Detection of  Staphylococcus aureus in Chicken Macaroni Salad

Cardinez, M.C.C.a, Delos Reyes, A.J.J.a, Jacosalem, G.M.a, Quiatchon, P.A.N.a, Tumambing, V.K.Ma

a Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Home Economics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines

1. INTRODUCTION

The macaroni salad is a pasta salad served cold usually made from elbow macaroni and mayonnaise as its dressing. Like potato salad and coleslaw, macaroni salad is commonly presented as a side dish of barbecued chicken and meat meals. However, in the Philippines, the macaroni salad is served as a dessert because of its sweeter taste compared to other macaroni salads prepared in other countries.

In general, the ingredients used in preparing salads should impart fresh-like quality characteristics (HKSAR, July 2002). An example is for vegetable salads, fresh lettuce leaves, cucumbers and carrots are used. In the case of macaroni salad, though most of the ingredients are pre-cooked like pickles, ham and chicken, there are still some components of this salad that are preferred fresh when added like carrots and onions and some also that are manually processed by the hands before being added to the salad such as the chicken strips.

Delicacies prepared with hand contact like salads and sandwiches are one of the many foods involved in food poisoning. One of the agents that may have taken opportunity to spread through this process is Staphylococcus. Reduction of microbial competitors due to minimal processing of other ingredients increases the   growth rate of   these microorganisms. In a study conducted by Fowler and Clark 96-100% of the 517 salads from 170 establishments contained S. aureus (J. M. Jay, 2005). Staphylococcus is a common human pathogen found usually on skin, nose, throat and hair but the most numbers is found in the nasal fossae (Varnam, 1996).

Staphylococcus, which is a Gram-positive, catalase positive bacteria have been well known to...