The health risks posed by Salmonella spp., Salmonella Enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium through the consumption of raw vegetables and vegetarian burger patties necessitates the needs for the optimization of analytical approach for their detection and enumeration in the raw vegetables, which served as potential vehicles for transmission of these pathogenic microorganisms. We sought to establish a rapid, economic and sensitive method to detect and determine the load of Salmonella spp., Salmonella Enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium using the most probable numbers (MPN) in combination with the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (MPCR). From the naturally contaminated one hundred and seventy five samples tested (n = 175), the overall prevalence of Salmonella spp. was 28%, Salmonella Enteritidis was 20% and Salmonella Typhimurium was 14.3%, respectively. The MPN-MPCR is a quantitative method to determine the density of cell concentration of Salmonella in all the samples (Salmonella spp. ranged from <3 to 53 MPN/g; S. Enteritidis ranged from <3 to 24 MPN/g; and S. Typhimurium ranged from <3 to 15 MPN/g). The combination of the MPN-MPCR is an efficient, simple, fast analytical method for the detection and enumeration of Salmonella spp., Salmonella Enteritidis and Salmonella Typhimurium in vegetables and the vegetarian burger patties since it can significantly reduce time and labour with analysis completed within 2 days, as opposed to the traditional confirmation method that can take up to 5 days for unequivocal identification of species.

Bacillus cereus is a major foodborne pathogen of great concern to the dairy industry owing to its resilient spores as well as the adverse effect of its toxins. At present, there is no informational study available to solve or pinpoint the UHT chocolate milk contamination issue in Malaysia. This work aimed to investigate the prevalence and contamination level of B. cereus s.l. in UHT chocolate milk and to suggest the appropriate solution for the issue. In the present study, B. cereus s.l. prevalence and contamination level in individually packed UHT chocolate milk from processing factories was evaluated. The prevalence and concentration of B. cereus s.l. were determined via MPN-PCR (Most Probable Number-Polymerase Chain Reaction) assay. Results showed that 31.11% from 220 of UHT chocolate milk tested contained Bacillus spp.; of this Bacillus spp. positive samples, 24.30% were also positive for B. cereus s.l. with concentration ranging from less than 3 to more than 1100 MPN/mL. Findings from this study highlighted the possibility of UHT chocolate milk as a potential source of B. cereus s.l. infection. Therefore, findings emphasized the needs to revise, monitor and improve UHT sterilization process to reduce infection risk. Furthermore, it is also essential to maintain the hygiene to minimize initial microbial load and contamination of UHT chocolate milk, beginning from production to retail.