Indicator organisms as indices of sanitary quality for milk and some milk products

I. 150 random samples of milk and milk products (40 milksamples, 40 Damietta cheese samples, 40 Kareish cheese.samples, .30 yoghurt samples) were collected from diff-erent localities in Behera province. Moreover all sampleswere examined for the presence of coliforms, enterococciand Staphylococcus aureus, the cheese samples for their sodium chloride content and the yoghur-t samples for their acidity.The milk samples showed the following geometric mean values: 5.61 x 10.3 coliforms/ml, 8.44 x 10.3 enterococci/ml and 1.2x105Staphylococcus aureus/ml. In a few samples coliforms « .3/ml) and enterococci « 10/ml) could not befound, Staphylococcus aureus were present in all samples (minimum: 1. 2 x 103/ml).The results for coliforms (1.85 x 10.3/gm) and Staphyloco- ccus aureus (1.09 x 105/gm) in Damietta cheese weresimilar to those in milk, the geometric mean for entero- 5 cocci, however, was higher (1.18 x 10 /gm). In 20% ofthe samples coliforms could not be detected « .3/gm) , but all samples contained enterococci (minimum: ~ x 10J/gm) and Staphylococcus aureus (minimum: 8 x 102/gm).The microbiological quality of the Kareish cheese sampleswas the most unfavourable of the products tested. The geometric means run to 7.53 x 105 coliforms/gm, 2.29 x 106 enterococci/gm and 1.44 x 105 Staphylococcus aureus/gm.Enterococci (minimum: 7 x 104/gm) and Staphylococcus aureus