Hi all,
I am a Malaysian doctor who currently lives in Australia.
Recently it's become a hot discussion topic in Malaysia regarding the hygiene standard of migrant food handlers (mostly from poorer countries e.g. Bangladesh, India, Nepal etc) - anecdotally many of these migrant food handlers are noted to have poor food preparation standard and personal hygiene habits.
A news report then cited a research study done by a Malaysian researcher (I have included the actual PDF below). Essentially the methodology is as below:
- migrant food handlers are investigated
- a few restaurants in major Malaysian town are visited during peak hour, where these migrant food handlers have hand swabs taken on UNWASHED hands, on both hands.
- these are analysed for APC, E. coli / coliform, and Staph aureus.
- Sneed's standard is used for "acceptable level" - (less than 1.3 log10CFU for APC, less than 1.0 log10CFU for Enterobacteriaceae counts, and less than 1.0 log10CFU for S aureus counts). - PDF included.
- they reported some shocking finding: 99.5% exceeded APC limit, 20.8% exceeded total coliform/Escherichia coli limit, 63.4% exceeded Staphylococcus aureus limit.
Some of my concerns about its methodology:
- local food handlers are not included so no point of reference.
- Sneed's standard is for food handling surfaces e.g. cutting board. I haven't seen any validation study saying that these are usable for human hand swabs.
- Is it legitimate to use unwashed hands? I thought surface swabs and hand swabs are supposed to be taken after they are WASHED.
- Sneed's standard... it's a bit vague, but I am of the impression it should have "per cm^2" on them.
- The only standard I have read is the Indian EIC guideline, where it is 100CFU/cm^2 for APC, and absent for both coliform and S aureus.
- If my back of envelope calculation is correct, then for a standard adult hand size, two palmar surfaces (seem to be what they have swabbed from) would be approximately 400cm^2, which makes the acceptable standard 40000CFU if converted from the EIC standard, or equivalent to 4.6log10CFU in logarithmic unit.
I found you guys through my online research in this area and I hope to receive feedback on my interpretation in this issue so far. This news report has been used as a fodder against foreign food handlers in Malaysia (with a huge undertone of xenophobia and racism), and from what I have found so far the whole study is pretty illegitimate going by the information I have found on this forum!