The Contamination Level Of The Poultry Carcasses During The Slaughtering Flow
Abstract
Abstract. During the past years, both production and consumption of poultry meat has known an ascending path worldwide. This led to an intensive production simultaneous with a growing number of agricultural farms.
In this context, germ contamination may be influenced by several technological factors during the slaughtering process. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the impact of some poultry slaughtering stages such as: bleeding, depluming, evisceration, washing, cooling, packing - on the carcasses germ flora. The experiment took place in a slaughtering house situated in Iasi county, Romania. The evaluation was accomplished by the following microbiological parameters: total number of germs (TNG), Coliformi fecali, Enterobacteriaceae, Escherichia coli.
The samples were gathered for five months from a total number of 180 “Ross 308†poultry carcasses, which were randomly chosen during the slaughtering. The biological material comes from the poultry growing specialized farms.
As for the evolutional point of view, the largest germ charge on the carcasses surface was noticed just after the deplumation and evisceration. These are the stages when the microorganisms contamination occur intensively. The highest mean values for every parameter we studied are: TNG - 7.12 ± 0.13 log10 ufc/g; Coliformi fecali - 5.48 ±0.14 log10 ufc/g, Enterobacteriaceae - 5.59 ± 0.09 log10 ufc/g at evisceration stage, Escherichia coli - 4.80 ±0.11 log10 ufc/g at depluming stage.
Statistically there were significant differences (P < 0.001) between the calculated mean values for every microbiological parameter during each stage of the slaughtering process. This study brings valuable information regarding the microflora dinamics during the slaughtering process.
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