[ survey on the bacterial contamination of traditional ice cream produced in Gonabad city]

Ice cream, a milk based product is a good media for microbial growth due to high nutrition value, almost neutral PH value and long storage duration. Contamination of this product with pathogen micro-organism can lead to food poisoning and food born infection and can endanger the sanitation of human. The aim of this research was to assess microbial status of traditional Ice creams. In this cross-sectional study a total of 100 samples of traditional Ice cream were obtained randomly from the retail stores in summer. All the samples were analyzed for microbial contamination according to the Iran national standard .The collected data were analyzed statistically using t-test by SPSS for windows. The results show that 26% of the samples were contaminated higher than standard level [>5_104 /gr], 75% of the samples were contaminated higher than standard level [>10 /gr] with entrobacteriacea. Staphylococcus aurous and Escheria coli were isolated from 4% and 32% of samples respectively .No salmonella was isolated from samples. To prevent outbreak of poisoning and microbial infections due to consumption of Ice cream as well as supervision and control during the production are essential