Bacterial Pathogen Survey in Chocolate Confectioneries 2016-2018

Canadian Food Inspection Agency analyzed 3,173 samples of chocolate-based confectionaries for Salmonella, total coliforms, and generic E. coli between April 2016 and March 2018. Salmonella and generic E. coli were not detected in any samples, while high coliform levels were found in 3 samples. The agency conducted follow-up inspections and sampling.

Use Cases

• Train binary classifiers to predict the presence of high coliform levels using sample metadata and testing conditions.
• Analyze contamination rates and distributions for specific pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli across the sampled confectionery products.
• Build anomaly detection models to identify rare high-coliform events within the 3,173-sample dataset.
• Perform time-series analysis on survey results collected over the two-year period from April 2016 to March 2018.

Strengths

• Substantial sample size of 3,173 chocolate-based confectionary products.
• Clear binary results for Salmonella and generic E. coli (0 detections).
• Specific temporal coverage from April 1, 2016, to March 31, 2018.

Limitations

• Unknown sample metadata and column structure limits feature engineering.
• Geographic scope is limited to Canada, reducing generalizability.
• Results are specific to chocolate confectioneries and may not transfer to other food categories.

Provenance

Source

Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Collection Method

Targeted survey involving laboratory analysis of collected samples.

Time Range

April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2018.

Freshness

Data covers 2016-2018; report was last updated on the platform in April 2026.

Geography

Canada.