Abstract
Commercial baby food staples including 78 dried, 44 bottled and 10 canned products were evaluated bacteriologically. Most of bottled and canned staples contained less than 102/g of aerobic bacteria. But, dried staples were contaminated with the relatively higher number of bacteria: particularly, among 14 of 26 milk-containing foods, their bacterialcounts were more than 102/g. B. licheniformis and B. subtilis were recovered at the highest frequency from any types of staples. In addition to these two species, B. cereus, B. pumilus, B. megaterium, B. circulans and B. coagulans were also isolated frequently from dried foods.
