Bacterial Quality of some Dessert Toppings

One hundred and twenty-five imitation dairy toppings and forty real dairy toppings were examined for total place psychrotrophic, coliform and enterococci counts, and for the incidence of staphylococci and salmonellae. All samples were free of salmonellae and coagulase positive staphylococci. Five (3.03%) of the 165 samples had a total plate count of > 1000/ g. The psychrotrophic count for all samples averaged < 10/ g. Twelve percent of the samples were contaminated with eoliforms and 11.5% with enterococci. A comparison of aerosol containers of imitation dairy topping revealed that 5.0% of the imitation dairy topping samples were coliform positive as opposed to 0.0% of the real dairy toppings. In addition 30% of the imitation samples contained enterococci as compared to 7.5% of the samples of real dairy topping. The total plate counts and psychrotrophic counts for these products were similar.