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State of the Art in Hygienic Quality of Food Ice Worldwide: A Ten-Year Review
Summary
This ten-year review assessed the hygienic quality of food ice worldwide, analyzing contamination data from studies published between 2012 and 2022. Food ice frequently contained microbial contaminants exceeding safety thresholds across multiple countries, pointing to inadequate ice production hygiene as a persistent global food safety concern.
Ice consumption has widely increased over the last decade. Cases of ice contamination by various microorganisms (bacteria, viruses and fungi) have been documented in the literature. In this review, we summarize the findings of selected articles on the hygienic and sanitary quality of food ice from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2023. A total of 14 articles found via the PubMed search engine during the study period were reviewed. From the comparison between the ice produced on an industrial scale and the ice produced on a local scale in food businesses, the latter was found to be more contaminated by microorganisms. The most detected bacteria included Escherichia coli, coliforms, Pseudomonas spp., Staphylococcus aureus; three studies evaluated the presence of Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus; two studies highlighted the presence of viruses (Rotavirus and Norovirus). Finally, two studies detected the presence of fungi (molds and yeasts). Almost all authors of the studies argued that ice contamination also depends on the hygienic-sanitary quality of the ice-making machines. The results show that the information currently available in the literature on the hygienic-sanitary quality of ice is incomplete and that future national and international scientific studies need to be carried out.
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