Abstract of research

Incidence and characterization of S. aureus in broiler carcasses

Saad Mahmoud Saad1 , Nahla A, Abou-Elroos2 and Sherif Reda Abdel-fadeel3

Abstract

One hundred random samples and swabs taken from freshly broiler chicken were collected from one of the largest half automated poultry slaughterhouse in Al-kalubiah governorate. The samples were classified as follow : 40 samples of chicken breast and thigh (20 of each), and 60 swabs from knives after slaughtering of these chickens and from chicken carcasses surfaces after defeathering from the region under the right wings and after evisceration from the region under the left wings (20 of each). The obtained results showed that the mean values of Staphylococcus counts/ cm2 were 2.62×108  9.04×107 , 2.42×107  8.01×106 and 3.63×107  2.74×107 swabs from knives, swabs after defeathering and swabs after evisceration, respectively. While the mean values/g were 1.42×106  8.19×105 and 1.24×106  5.88×105 for breast and thigh samples. The average counts were of S. aureus were 1.29×108  4.75×107 , 1.24×107  4.22×106 and 1.68×107  1.24×107CFU/cm2 from knives, swabs after defeathering and swabs after evisceration, and 2.92× 105  2.10× 105 and 1.91 × 105  1.54× 105 for breast and thigh, respectively. Application of PCR technique declared that the occurrence of one or more virulence genes in S. aureus isolated from the examined chicken meat samples. The enterotoxin type A was produced by 2 strains of S. aureus, while enterotoxin type C, A+B and B+D were produced by single strain of S. aureus. On the other hand, there were 11 strains of S. aureus were not capable of producing enterotoxin. Finally, the significance of isolated S. aureus toxins in the examined samples of various raw chicken meats, possible sources of their contamination and their antimicrobial resistance against certain antibiotics as well as some recommendations to improve the quality of such food items were discussed.