Maintaining an appropriate level of food hygiene is crucial in assuring food safety and preventing foodborne illnesses, although the importance of food hygiene is often neglected in the household kitchen setting. Adherence to good hygienic practices (GMPs) in the domestic environment is equally important as the implementation of GMPs to any other food preparation environment, like the one encountered in the food industry. The current review encompasses research data on prevalence and isolation of major foodborne pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli pathotypes, Campylobacter) from household kitchen equipment, with a special emphasis on the comparative hygienic status of food cleaning utensils used in home kitchens, such as sponges, brushes, kitchen dishcloths and hand towels. The bacterial pathogen most commonly found in the domestic environment is S. aureus, which can be transmitted through hand-to-mouth route via direct contact with the contaminated kitchen surface and/or cleaning utensils or indirectly through the consumption of contaminated food due to cross-contamination incidences during preparation of food (e.g., portioning of ready-to-eat meat in the same cutting board surface and with same knife used previously for cutting fresh leafy salad vegetables). Moreover, research findings on the hygiene of food cleaning utensils clearly demonstrate that (i) sponges present the highest microbial load compared to all other cleaning utensils, (ii) kitchen dishcloths and hand towels are frequently used multiple times for more than one uses (e.g., hand drying and cleaning/removing excess humidity from the dishes at the same time), contributing in that way to cross-contamination, (ii) brushes are more hygienic than sponges and safer for cleaning kitchen cutlery and utensils.
Ματαράγκα et al. (Tue,) studied this question.