In the food processing industry, a food handler’s role is one of the most important in ensuring the safety of food. Food handler is an essential part in the chain of preparation, cooking, packaging and delivery of food. A food handler is directly involved in, packaging or unpackaging food, food equipment and utensils, or food contact surfaces¹. In order to make sure that the food is safe and free from any contamination, a food handler must fulfill the requirements to ensure the food hygiene. During the preparation, processing, delivery and serving of food, a food handler is capable of being a potential source of bacteria that causes foodborne diseases by introducing these pathogens in to the food. It has been found that incorrect practices in the food industry by a food handler are responsible for about 97% of foodborne ailments^2-3.

The contamination of food with harmful micro-organisms may occur, either directly by an infected food handler, or indirectly through contact with a food contact surface that has been previously contaminated by an infected food handler⁴. In addition to pathogens, toxins, and other contaminants of the food also pose a serious threat to human health, and lead to high morbidity and mortality. Among many micro-organisms, some of the various bacterial pathogens that have been found to be the frequent contaminants of food are Salmonella, Listeria, S. aureus, Campylobacter, Trichinosis, E. coli, Campylobacter and Clostridium. These microbes cause severe infections with high morbidity, and majority of these infections have been attributed to food borne transmission⁵. Recently, Australian institute of food safety reported that among many microbes, Salmonella, Listeria, S. aureus, Campylobacter, Trichinosis, E. coli, Campylobacter and Clostridium are the top 7 causes of food poisoning. The health department of Australia estimates that food poisoning affects around 5.4 million Australians each year⁶. Food borne or waterborne microbial pathogens are considered as leading causes of infections and deaths in developing countries, killing an estimated 1.9 million people annually at the global level. Even in developed countries, an estimated one-third of the populations are affected by microbiological food borne diseases each year⁷. The food borne infection usually involves the intestinal enteropathogenic bacteria and their transmission is helped directly or indirectly by objects contaminated with feces.

Food handlers capable of harboring and excreting enteropathogenic bacteria may contaminate foods from their feces through their fingers, then to food processing, and finally to healthy individuals⁸. It has been reported that the area of hand beneath fingernails works as a vector for transmission of harmful microorganisms through cross contamination as compared to other parts of the hand⁹. One of the major illness or infection due to bacterial contaminated food is diarrheal disease, and globally, diarrheal diseases are second only to respiratory diseases as a cause of adult death and are the leading cause of childhood death. In some parts of the world, they are responsible for more years of potential life lost than all other causes combined¹⁰. In addition to cause the food borne illness, the bacterial strains such as, Salmonella spp. and E. coli have tendency to evolve in order to exploit novel opportunities, for example fresh produce, and even generate new public health challenges like antimicrobial resistance^11-13. The spread of foodborne disease due to pathogens which are highly resistant to antibiotics has become a health care issue worldwide. Additionally, the toxins produced by the bacterial strains in to the food cause a substantial loss to the food industry because a large amount of money has to be spent on analyzing and identifying preventive measures.

Currently, the gold standard; traditional culture-based methods are used to identify the majority of food-associated bacteria in the daily routine of food microbiology laboratories globally. Complete identification is a time consuming process and requires at least two days, or more for fastidious organisms. By using these phenotypic methods, sometimes, bacterial isolates with different taxonomic background and similar physiological characteristics pose a challenge and may give non reliable result.

Thus, the development of a rapid, sensitive, specific, and cost-effective analytical method is of great importance for detection of microbial contaminants in the food. Recently, many technological improvements to methods for the identification of micro-organisms, such as MALDI–TOF-MS, have successfully been incorporated in clinical microbiology laboratories globally. MALDI–TOF-MS is a useful, fast, reliable and simple technique for the correct identification of micro-organisms and several studies have highlighted the advantages and performance of MALDI–TOF-MS including, rapidity, low sample volume requirements and low reagent costs¹⁴. MALDI-TOF-MS provides a suitable platform for quick, flexible, and reliable identification of food associated microbes because of the simple protocol and shortened analysis time¹⁵. Therefore, the aim of this study was to detect the colonized pathogenic bacteria from food handlers in Ha’il region of Saudi Arabia and to compare the results using conventional methods, MALDI-TOF-MS, Microscan and Vitek 2.