Hazard Analyses of Foods Prepared by Inhabitants Near Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Sierra

Abstract

Hazard analyses of food preparation practices were conducted in two households in an Andean Indian Pueblo near Puno, Peru and in a house on the outskirts of this city. These analyses consisted of watching all steps of preparation, recording temperatures throughout all these steps, and collecting samples of food and testing them for common foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms. Only cereal-potato soup (a very popular and inexpensive food in the region), kidney stew, and parched cereal were prepared during the survey. The soups boiled during cooking and most of them were eaten during the first serving. Vegetative forms of pathogenic bacteria would have been killed during cooking, but heat-resistant spores would have survived. Leftovers in the pueblo homes, when there were any, remained without heat on the clay stoves on which they had been cooked until eaten or reheated. In the other household, cooked foods were moved from the stove to an earthen floor and kept there until reheating. Under this condition, cooling was more rapid than when left on stoves. The interval of time that cooked foods were between 49°C (120°F) and 21°C (70°F) during holding was less than 4 h, thereby limiting spore germination and bacterial multiplication. In the only household in which foods were reheated, they boiled. Critical control points for food preparation in homes are cooking, holding between cooking and serving, and reheating.