Assessment of bacteriological quality of ready to eat food vended in streets of Silchar city, Assam, India.

A total of 37 street vended food samples were examined for bacterial and the colony forming units counts ranged from 4.5 × 105 to 1.12 × 106. The isolates were identified as Escherichia coli (37.5%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (3.57%), Staphylococcus aureus (14.20%), Salmonella sp. (5.36%), Klebsiella sp. (10.71%), Shigella sp. (19.64%) and Enterobacter sp. (8.93%) respectively. All the 56 isolates were susceptible to ciprofloxacin while their susceptibility to the other drugs varied. These findings demonstrated that the ready‑to‑eat foods vended in Silchar city constitute an important potential hazard to human health and provision of health education to the vendors would improve quality of street foods.