A preventative approach to promote food safety

Purpose – Domestic refrigerators could be considered as one of the major potential sources of food-borne diseases, in addition limited data are available regarding the level of contamination of domestic refrigerators in Iran. The purpose of this paper is to detect some of bacterial contamination in domestic refrigerators. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 104 households were randomly selected from ten health centers in five areas of Tehran, Iran. Visual inspection and temperature evaluation of the households’ refrigerators were done. In addition, the refrigerators were swabbed and analyzed for contaminants using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. DNA was isolated and purified by the proposed standard protocol. Findings – Screening of the domestic refrigerators by PCR method showed that 51.7 percent of the samples were positive for pathogens as follows: L. monocytogenes 41.6 percent, S. aureus 5.5 percent, Salmonella spp 4.6 percent, and E. coli O157:H7 0 percent; consequently, none of mentioned...