Microbial Hazard Analysis of Astragalus membranaceus Bunge for the Good Agricultural Practices

Abstract

Bunge on the post-harvest processing. Samples from processing equipments (cleaner, water, cart, table, tray and packaging machine), personal hygiene (hand) and harvested crops (before washing, after washing, after sorting, and after drying) were collected from four farms (A, B, C, and D) located in Chungchengbuk-do, Korea. The samples were analyzed for sanitary indication bacteria and pathogenic bacteria. First, total aerobic bacteria and coliform in processing facilities were detected at the levels of 0.93~4.86 and 0.33~2.28 log CFU/100 cm 2 and /mL respectively. In particular, microbial contamination in hand (5.43~6.11 and 2.52~4.12 log CFU/Hand) showed higher than processing equipments. Among the pathogenic bacteria, Bacillus cereus was detected at the levels of 0.33~2.41 log CFU/100 cm 2 , 1.48~3.27 log CFU/Hand and 0.67~3.65 log CFU/g in equipments, hands, and plants and Staphylococcus aureus were detected in cleaner, table, hand and harvested crops (before washing and after sorting) by qualitative test. Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella spp. were not detected. These results indicated that personal hygiene and processing equipments should be managed to reduce the microbial contamination of A. membranaceus Bunge. Therefore, management system such as good agricultural practices (GAP) criteria is needed for hygienic agricultural products.