Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli contaminating chicken meat cuts

Abstract

Although chicken meat cuts are of high nutritious, economic and consumers' demanded meats, but it may be a serious microbial food poisoning cause referring to low hygienic procedures during production. Therefore, the current study was established to isolate and identify enteropathogenic Escherichia coli in one hundred random samples of raw chicken meat cuts represented by chicken breast and thigh meat samples (50 of each) that were collected from different poultry shops in Qalubiya Governorate. The obtained results revealed that the incidence of E. coli was (24%) in all the examined samples, where it in thigh samples (28%) were more than in breast ones (20%). Serotyping of the isolated E. coli strains revealed that they belonged to both enteropathogenic (EPEC) and enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) serotypes. Moreover, out of six isolates that were molecularly investigated for Shiga toxins producing genes, only one isolate revealed presence of Shiga toxin-2 producing gene (stx-2) with prevalence of 16.67%. So, it was concluded that, breast and thigh chicken meat cuts may harbor pathogenic E. coli that possess public health hazards affecting consumers' health.