Abstract: The presence of coli forms in food has been used as indicator of the sanitary condition of food as well as the working area used in the preparation or manufacture of food products. However, the subsequent evaluation should be dealt with on a case-to-case basis. It could be seen from the data that the collected vegetables contained coli forms ranging from 100 to 220 per gram. This shows that there is a high possibility that the samples have been contaminated by fecal coli forms and so are not fit for human consumption. But then one has to understand that there are other sources of coli forms in vegetables so that it does not necessarily mean that the vegetables are not fit for human consumption. A high coli form content should merit further examinations and investigations as to the sources of coli forms in the vegetables. In this study, it is important to note that the number of coli forms does not depend on which shop is examined but it depends on the type of vegetables. This is an indication of similarities in the handling of a particular type of vegetables. It shows also that the vegetables are coming from the same source. The nature of the vegetables is also important, for example, leafy vegetables will have more coli forms since the leaves may be a good environment for the growth and preservation of bacteria.

Keywords: coli forms, vegetable salads, pathogen