Microbiological quality of ice and ice machines used in food establishments

Abstract

The ice used in the food industry has to be safe and the water used in ice production should have the quality of drinking water. The consumption of contaminated ice directly or indirectly may be a vehicle for transmission of pathogenic bacteria to humans producing outbreaks of gastrointestinal diseases. The objective of this study was to monitor the microbiological quality of ice, the water used in producing ice and the hygienic conditions of ice making machines in various food enterprises. Escherichia coli was detected in seven (6.7%) ice and 23 (21.9%) ice chest samples whereas E. coli was negative in all examined water samples. Psychrophilic bacteria were detected in 83 (79.0%) of 105 ice chest and in 68 (64.7%) of 105 ice samples, whereas Enterococci were detected only in 13 (12.4%) ice samples. Coliforms were detected in 13 (12.4%) water, 71 (67.6%) ice chest and 54 (51.4%) ice samples. In order to improve the microbiological quality of ice, the maintenance, cleaning and disinfecting of ice machines should be carried out effectively and periodically. Also, high quality water should be used for ice production.

Presence of pathogenic bacteria in ice cubes and evaluation of their survival in different systems

“…A bar consumption was simulated, with different drink systems, in order to estimate the effectiveness of the ice cubes to transfer pathogenic agents to consumers, and the results indicated a consistent risk reduction due to alcohol, CO 2 , pH and antibacterial ingredients. Thus, although several studies have been conducted in the last 2 years on the microbiological quality of packaged food ice (Awuor et al 2016;Economou et al 2017;Gaglio et al 2017;Hampikyan et al 2017;Lee et al 2017), focussing deep attention on the quality of water and transformation process, this study provides evidence and deepens previous findings (Gaglio et al 2017) on the effective risk related to the most common mode of consumption of contaminated ice. Furthermore, the findings evidenced several criticisms related to the food ice cube production, indicating the need to better investigate the hygiene of the water and equipment used, the transformation process applied, and storage/transport conditions.…”

“…Due to several hygiene issues related to direct (used for cooling drinks) or indirect (used for cooling fish soon after catching) ice consumption that led to the occurrence of gastroenteritis (Graman et al 1997;Wilson et al 1997; Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13213-017-1311-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Nichols et al 2000;Pawsey and Howard 2001;Falcao et al 2004;Lateef et al 2006;Gerokomou et al 2011;Noor Izani et al 2012), the industrial manufacturing of ice cubes still has to undergo high process standards (Hampikyan et al 2017). The general flow diagram for ice cube production applied at industrial level, indicating the critical points related to the microbiological contaminations, is reported in Fig.…”

“…(Nichols et al 2000;Falcao et al 2002;Gerokomou et al 2011;Noor Izani et al 2012;Awuor et al 2016;Hampikyan et al 2017). The presence of other undesired opportunistic pathogenic species is not commonly investigated, although food ice is responsible for the dissemination of clinically relevant bacteria (Gaglio et al 2017).…”

Yeasts and moulds contaminants of food ice cubes and their survival in different drinks

“…; Hampikyan et al . ). However, the presence of micro‐organisms in ice cubes is not only due to the contamination of the water used (Lateef et al .…”

“…In general, the microbiological investigations of ice focus on plate counts and the application of biochemical tests for the identification of the major pathogenic bacteria, mainly Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Yersinia spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Clostridium perfringens, Shigella spp., Vibrio cholerae and Aeromonas spp. (Nichols et al 2000;Falcao et al 2002;Gerokomou et al 2011;Noor Izani et al 2012;Awuor et al 2016;Hampikyan et al 2017). However, the presence of micro-organisms in ice cubes is not only due to the contamination of the water used (Lateef et al 2006;Northcutt and Smith 2010), to the scarce hygienic conditions during production and the improper handling (Noor Izani et al 2012), to the packaging containers or bags (Chavasit et al 2011), but it also depends on the contamination by aerosol.…”