Often, the vegetables are not washed before transporting them to market centres or if at all they are washed, the water may not be clean hence the amount of microbes at the time of procurement could be high. Moreover, in most restaurants, vegetables are only minimally processed (e.g. washing, cutting, etc.) without any form of heat treatment to destroy the microbes. This makes vegetable washing and sanitising in restaurants a critical step that needs thorough attention to reduce bacterial load to safe levels.