Assessment of Microbiological Quality and Aflatoxin Levels of Paneer Marketed in Chennai, India

Abstract

India is an agrarian country with major proportion of population as vegetarian so paneer is of great value in diet with respect to its food and nutritive value. An attempt was made to evaluate the microbial and toxicity levels of paneer marketed in Chennai city. For this purpose, 40 samples were collected from the supermarket located in South and North Chennai. Standard methods were used for both microbiological assessment and aflatoxin identification. All samples were analyzed for presence of E. coli, Salmonella spp., Pseudomonas aureginous, Staphylococcus aureus, total bacterial count and total yeast and mould count. Among all the samples, E. coli was found in 50% of the market samples. Salmonella spp., Pseudomonas aureginous and Staphylococcus aureus were found to be absent in all samples. All the 40 samples had bacteriological counts ranging from 10x10⁶ to 45x10⁶ cfu/g and fungal counts ranging from 5x10⁵ to 25x10⁵ cfu/g. Aflatoxin contamination in paneer was also analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using fluorescence detector. 43% of samples were found to be contaminated with aflatoxins at concentrations ranging from 0.03-389 µg/kg. Overall, this study carried out suggests that microbiological quality of paneer available in the city of Chennai is not within the limits set by the regulatory bodies and contains residual level of aflatoxins which pose public health risk. Therefore, there is a need for continuous monitoring of aflatoxins in paneer and also implementation of HACCP in dairy industry.