Safety of a street vended traditional maize beverage, ice-kenkey, in Ghana

• The study showed the need to improve the safety of ice-kenkey as street food.
• The raw materials maize and groundnuts exposed ice-kenkey to aflatoxin contamination.
• Manual operations exposed ice-kenkey to contamination with pathogens.
• Pasteurization could drastically improve the microbiological safety of ice-kenkey.

Ice-kenkey is a chilled cereal beverage sold as street food in some open markets in Ghana. It is produced by mashing and sweetening kenkey, a stiff dumpling produced from fermented maize meal. The safety of street vended ice-kenkey was assessed by microbiological, elemental and myco-toxicological analysis of ice-kenkey and intermediary products obtained from 16 producers in four open markets in the Accra and Tema metropolis. A tenfold increase in counts of aerobic mesophiles, and yeast and moulds were recorded during the production of ice-kenkey. Coliform bacteria, E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus which were not detected in the starting materials were found partway through production or in the final product. The mean microbial counts in the packaged ice-kenkey were 106–107 CFU/g for aerobic mesophiles, 104–105 CFU/g for yeast and moulds, 10–1000 CFU/g for total coliforms and 10–100 CFU/g for S. aureus. E. coli counts of 10 CFU/g were recorded in samples from three out of the four markets. The microbial load could be eliminated by pasteurizing ice-kenkey at 80 °C for 15 min. The mean concentration in mg/kg of Fe was between 15.97 and 29.48, Cu, 0.57 to 1.41, Mn, 0 to 2.55, Pb 0 to 1.25 and Zn 0.47 to 6.17. Total aflatoxins content in samples ranged from 7.04 to 22.17 μg/kg and included a range of 7.01–20.54 for aflatoxin B1, 0.51 to 1.63 for aflatoxin B2 and 0–0.47 μg/kg for aflatoxin GI. Aflatoxin G2 was not detected in any of the samples. A simplified training module based GMP, GHP and a HACCP plan was developed and used to train ice-kenkey producers in Accra in collaboration with municipal authorities.