Frozen desserts are ice cream and other ices which are kept frozen or at low temperature that are said to be frozen dairy desserts. Frozen desserts include ice cream, ice milk and other edible ices. Ice cream is mainly prepared with milk fat which is about 10-16% according to manufacturer standard, without fat milk solids is almost 9-12%, sugar mainly sucrose is about 9-12%, it has water about 55 - 64% and 0.200.50% are stabilizeror emulsifier
In this study 100 samples of commercially prepared frozen desserts were collected and analyzed microbiologically. Nine towns of Lahore were studied, 10 samples were collected from each town from the street venders/local manufacturer, total 90 samples from venders/local manufacturers and 10 samples were collected from the brands outlets. Frozen desserts include dairy frozen dessert, synthetic frozen dessert and some frozen dairy desserts. These samples were culture on Baird Parker agar and the isolated bacteria were further confirmed by PCR tests for detection and identification of the genes encoding Staphylococcal Enterotoxin type A Staphylococcal Enterotoxin type B.
Total 100 samples were processed microbiologically to identify the S. aureuscontamination in frozen desserts. Samples were taken from street vendors and local manufacturers. The results showed that 64% of the dairy frozen desserts were found positive by Staphylococcus spp. 56.25% of the isolates were coagulase positive. The PCR results showed that 17.8% of the S. aureusisolates possess type A gene, while 12.5% had the type B gene, and 9.3% carry both genes.
Laboratory results showed that street vendors which do not have any hygienic conditions as well as temperature maintenance system for their product, they were found contaminated with S. aureus. Major factor of S. aureuscontamination is the personnel handling involvement in the manufacturing frozen desserts. Personnel who were not following hygienic rules to manufacture frozen desserts were found contaminated withS. aureus.S. aureuscan survive at low temperature but cannot grow and produce enterotoxins at low temperature whenever there is a temperature fluctuation S. aureus grows and produce enterotoxins, which could be public health hazard Street vendors don’t have any temperature control system when there is no electricity.Frozen dessert consumers are at risk to get food borne illness or food poisoning.