Prevalence of Bacillus cereus from Fried Rice Dishes and Monitoring Guidelines for Risk Management

Contamination levels of aerobic colony counts, coliforms and pathogenic bacteria were tested in fried rice dishes to monitor quality for risk management. The prevalence of Bacillus cereus in dishes from 8 Chinese-style restaurants and 2 institutional foodservices was 10%, and the bacteria's contamination levels was 3.47 log CFU/g. Echerichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella were not detected in any of the 10 samples. However, for their aerobic colony counts and numbers of isolated coliforms, the samples were 30% and 70% over the microbial criteria, respectively, for ready-to-eat foods presented in the Korean Food Code. This suggests that fried rice dishes, although cooked with oil at high temperature, require special care. For the prediction of the growth curve of B. cereus spp. in the fried rice samples, an experiment design of 3 storage temperatures ($7^{\circ}C$, $35^{\circ}C$, $57^{\circ}C$) x 5 storage times (0 h, 2 h, 4 h, 6 h, 24 h) was applied. The sample exposed to $35^{\circ}C$ showed no B. cereus spp. at 0 h; however, there was a tendency of slow growth (1.0 log CFU/g) after 4 hours of storage and then faster growth at 6 h (3.7 log CFU/g) and 12 h (4.7 log CFU/g), showing a growth rate of 0.56 log CFU/g/hr. These results indicate that fried rice, despite being heat-treated, can become heavily contaminated with B. cereus spp. when held over 2 hours at room temperature. However, the samples stored at $7^{\circ}C$ and $57^{\circ}C$ over 24 hours were not contaminated with B. cereus. Based on these results, management guidelines for controlling B. cereus are suggested.

볶음밥의 Bacillus cereus 위해 수준 및 위해 관리를 위한 모니터링 기준 설정