Pyrosequencing analysis of microbial community and food-borne bacteria on restaurant cutting boards collected in Seri Kembangan, Malaysia, and their correlation with grades of food premises

• This is the first study that determines microbial diversity on cutting board.
• The result from this study reveals a very diversity of bacterial community exist on kitchen cutting board including various species of food-borne bacteria.
• Good hygiene level of the food premises does not necessarily ensure that the utensils used for food preparation is free from harmful microorganisms.
• The result is crucial to determine how the spread of food-borne bacteria can be controlled safely and the outbreak can be reduced.

This study adopts the pyrosequencing technique to identify bacteria present on 26 kitchen cutting boards collected from different grades of food premises around Seri Kembangan, a city in Malaysia. Pyrosequencing generated 452,401 of total reads of OTUs with an average of 1.4 × 107 bacterial cells/cm2. Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroides were identified as the most abundant phyla in the samples. Taxonomic richness was generally high with > 1000 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) observed across all samples. The highest appearance frequencies (100%) were OTUs closely related to Enterobacter sp., Enterobacter aerogenes, Pseudomonas sp. and Pseudomonas putida. Several OTUs were identified most closely related to known food-borne pathogens, including Bacillus cereus, Cronobacter sakazaki, Cronobacter turisensis, Escherichia coli, E. coli O157:H7, Hafnia alvei, Kurthia gibsonii, Salmonella bongori, Salmonella enterica, Salmonella paratyphi, Salmonella tyhpi, Salmonella typhimurium and Yersinia enterocolitica ranging from 0.005% to 0.68% relative abundance. The condition and grade of the food premises on a three point cleanliness scale did not correlate with the bacterial abundance and type. Regardless of the status and grades, all food premises have the same likelihood to introduce food-borne bacteria from cutting boards to their foods and must always prioritize the correct food handling procedure in order to avoid unwanted outbreak of food-borne illnesses.