Sandwich report Lab Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sandwich - Lab Report Example Among the foods that have been prepared to become ready to eat include meats, sushi, cheese, cereals, salads and other produce, dry goods including candies and biscuits, and meals that are ready to eat. On the other hand, salads and sandwiches are common ready to eat food that, due to their capacity for contamination, have been associated with strict guidelines for their preparation. Those guidelines conform to regulations that have been put in place in places like New York, and cover such things as changing/replacing gloves, prohibitions against the use of bare hands during the preparation process, and the kinds of food that are considered for inclusion in government codes of sanitation relating to the preparation of such ready to eat fare. It is worth noting that government codes have prescriptions for the degree to which food are to be heated in order to be considered safe for consumption. Since ready to eat food is generally not heated to meet those minimum temperature of reheati ng standards, they are subject to more rigorous regulations in terms of handling to prevent ready to eat food being contaminated with pathogens that can cause illness on wide scale. Food handling in preparation and in transport are by far the biggest sources of contamination when it comes to ready to eat food (Colorado Farm to Market, 2013; NY State Department of Health, 2005; Schaub, 2010; UK Government, 2008). Enterobacteriaceae are a group of pathogens that are used as indicators for when food has not been cooked adequately, or else when food has been subject to contamination after the food had been processed. E.coli, on the other hand, is a pathogen that when present indicates poor hygiene, lack of sanitation, and heat that has not been adequate to kill off the bacteria during the processing of food. Other pathogens include coagulase-positive staphylococci, c. perfingens, b. cereus, v. parahaemolyticus, campylobacter spp, salmonella spp, and L. monocytogenes (NSW Food Authority, 2009; ACT Health, 2002). These same pathogens seem to cross geographic boundaries, and share in common many of the pathogens that are found in ready to eat fare in other nations, such as Hong Kong, where ready to eat food is screened for a similar set of pathogens, including b. cereus, c. perfingens, campylobacter spp, e. coli, v. cholera, salmonella, and L. monocytogenes (Centre for Food Safety, 2007). The Canadian authorities include shigella, v. cholerae, y. enterocolitica, c. parvum, giardia lamblia, hepatitis, and scombroid poisoning to the list of pathogens above, with the most common symptoms and effects of contamination and infection in people being vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, wound infection, and gas gangrene (Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives, n.d.). In the US, meanwhile, there is an intense focus on salmonella, e coli and listeria monocytogenes as the pathogens that most commonly infect ready to eat food, including produce. The lines of defense arrayed aga inst such pathogens in food include thermally killing the pathogens, making use of the so-called bacteriophage treatment, and the use of so-called antimicrobial GRAS agents (Food Safety Research Information Office, 2010). It is worth noting that in some of the bacteriological guidelines that were considered for this paper, emphasis is given on rating the quality of the food as