Hazard analyses of foods prepared by inhabitants along the Peruvian Amazon river

Hazard analyses of food preparation practices were conducted in two households in Indiana (a settlement along the Peruvian Amazon River), in a household in a cluster of about a half dozen houses up river, and in three households in Belen (a district near Iquitos), Peru. These analyses consisted of watching all steps of the operation, recording temperatures throughout all these steps, and collecting samples of food and testing them for common foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms. Foods prepared included rice, plantains, yuca, dry fish, fresh fish, beef, and chicken. During cooking, foods attained temperatures of at least 93.3°C; they usually boiled. Such time-temperature exposure would kill vegetative forms of foodborne pathogenic bacteria, but not heat-resistant spores. When cooked foods were leftover, they were kept either on tables or on the unheated stoves or grills on which they were cooked. During this interval, at the prevailing ambient temperature and high humidity of the jungle region, conditions were such that considerable microbial growth could occur. Time of exposure, however, limited counts to the 10 -10 level. In the evening, foods were only mildly reheated, if reheated at all, so temperatures were not attained in the center regions of the food that would have killed microorganisms that had multiplied during the holding period. Hence, the primary critical control point is holding between cooking and serving, but cooking and reheating are critical control points also.