Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agro-Food Safety
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1535630
This article is part of the Research Topic Ensuring Food Safety And Quality Throughout The Supply Chain View all 15 articles

Spatial Analysis of Milk and Cottage Cheese Revealed Poor Microbial Quality and Contaminated with Foodborne Pathogens towards the Central Parts of Ethiopia

Provisionally accepted
Abdi Keba Abdi Keba 1Gebrerufael Girmay Gebrerufael Girmay 2Henok Nahusenay Henok Nahusenay 3Ashagrie Zewdu Ashagrie Zewdu 4*
  • 1 Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Holeta Agricultural Research Center, Holeta, Ethiopia
  • 2 Ethiopian Institute Agricultural Research, National Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Holeta, Ethiopia
  • 3 Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Head quarter Food science and Nutrition research directorate, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
  • 4 College of Natural Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Foodborne diseases remain a challenge in least developed countries, resulting from a wide range of illnesses caused by contaminated foods. The objective of this study was to evaluate the spatial distribution of milk and cottage cheese quality and safety standards through bacterial load and foodborne pathogen indicators in the dairy value chain in three regions of Ethiopia.A cross-sectional study design was employed from December 2020 to May 2021. A total of 912 samples were collected and tested for aerobic plate count, total coliform, E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enterica, and Campylobacter spp., according to standard microbial enumerations and isolation methods.The dairy products quality and safety in the dairy value chain is highly compromised in that the total bacteria count, total coliform count and Escherichia coli count were estimated as 98% (95% CI 97.2-98.9%), 61.2% (95% CI 58-64.3%), and 28.6% (95% CI 25.8-31.6%), respectively, below the standard of the Ethiopian Standard Agency. The overall prevalence of total samples contaminated by at least one pathogen was 50.3% (95% CI 47.1-53.7%), which indicated raw milk samples collected from the milk collectors were majorly contaminated (OR = 2.1, P = 0.003) and followed by milk processors (OR = 1.3, P = 0.003).The spatial analysis revealed that the poor microbial quality and foodborne pathogen distributions were concentrated in the central highlands of the country, around 100 kilometers radius from Addis Ababa city. This study offers some insight into the importance of food traceability to prevent food safety threats along the dairy value chain and intervention areas.

    Keywords: Dairy, value chain, FBP, Microbial load, spatial distribution

    Received: 27 Nov 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Keba, Girmay, Nahusenay and Zewdu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ashagrie Zewdu, College of Natural Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.