Microbiological Quality of Meat and Swabs from Contact Surface in Butcher Shops in Debre Berhan, Ethiopia

Abstract

Food-borne pathogens are the primary source of infection in developing countries. The widespread practice of raw beef consumption was a potential cause of food-borne diseases in Ethiopia. Hence, this study was initiated to assess the microbiological quality of fresh meat samples from butcher shops in Debre Berhan. Fresh meat samples and swab samples from contact surfaces were collected from butcher shops for microbial analysis, following standard methods. The study revealed that the mean microbial counts of morning samples for total aerobic mesophilic, Staphylococci, Enterobacteriaceae, total coliform, fecal coliform, aerobic spore formers, and yeasts and molds of the butcher shops were 5.31, 4.24, 4.47, 4.79, 4.74, 3.77, and 5.0 log cfu/g, respectively. The mean microbial counts from the afternoon sample for total aerobic mesophilic, Staphylococci, Enterobacteriaceae, total coliform, fecal coliform, aerobic spore formers, and yeasts and molds of the butcher shops were 5.47, 4.78, 4.84, 4.88, 4.94, 5.15, and 5.07 log cfu/g, respectively. A higher microbial load was found from the meat sample collected in the afternoon. The mean microbial counts of total aerobic mesophilic, Staphylococci, Enterobacteriaceae, total coliform, fecal coliform, aerobic spore formers, and yeasts and molds from swabs of the contact surface were 4.17, 3.98, 4.08, 3.96, 3.86, 3.80, and 3.92 log cfu/cm2, respectively. Further characterization of the aerobic mesophilic flora indicated a dominance by Enterobacteriaceae (36%) followed by Staphylococci spp. (24%) and Bacillus spp. (19%). The prevalence of S. aureus, E. coli, and Salmonella in meat and swab samples was 37.5%, 32.5%, and 7.5%, respectively. In this study, it was observed that all samples collected from butcher shops detected a significant count of spoilage microbes. Hence, adequate sanitary measures should be taken from production to consumption stages.

Physiological Characteristics of Putative Enterobacteria Associated with Meat and Fish Available in Southern Brazilian Retail Markets: Antimicrobial Susceptibility, Toxic Metal Tolerance and Expression of Efflux Pumps

“…Even though the European Union has no similar legislation for poultry and fish, the means for mesophilic aerobes encountered here are still considerable. By the other hand, studies have reported that the lack of proper hygiene during by workers meat handling is a major source of Gram-positive cocci contamination for these products [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. Taking that fish fillets (as those sampled) are sold pre-packaged by fishmongers and therefore would suffer less handling than poultry, pork and beef, which are kept open in refrigerated displays in butcher shops, the findings regarding Gram-positive counts in this study would corroborate the literature once these bacteria group counts were lower in fish samples.…”

Handwashing Practice of Food Establishment Customers, Microbial Quality of Handwashing Water, and Associated Factors in Ginjo Kebele, Jimma Town, Southwest Ethiopia

“…Serial dilutions of 10 −1 and 10 −2 were made based on the pretest made before the actual sample analysis and plates with a countable number of colonies (30-300) were considered to avoid the chance of error due to overcrowded growth of microbes and a small number of samples. After the sample specimen was spread over the agar media aseptically using a spreader, it was incubated at 32°C and 37°C for about 24 to 48 hours for total coliform and E. coli , 21 , 33 respectively. This was done in duplicate together with 1 negative field control and 1 negative laboratory control for both water and hand swab samples to check for the procedures (sampling, handling, and analysis) followed.…”

Isolation and Identification of Foodborne Pathogens of Special Interest in Food Safety

“…The rate of Enterobacteriaceae resulting from our analysis seems to be the same as the results of Armas et al (2020) Followed by minced meat, in second position, which might be due to the fact that these were samples of raw and fresh food. Enterobacteriaceae enumerations obtained from raw minced meat are significantly higher than those mentioned in the work of Siriken (2004); Elmali and Yaman (2005) in Turkey, Phillips et al (2008) in Australia, Abdelrahman et al (2014) in Egypt, Atlabachew and Mamo (2021) in Ethiopia. The high incidence of Enterobacteriaceae in ground beef constitutes a potential danger to public health, such as histamine poisoning, especially when consumed raw (with little or no cooking).…”

“…Among all the minced meat samples analyzed, the presence of S. aureus was confirmed in 5/12 (41.67 %) samples, this rate is higher than those mentioned in various studies such as Siriken et al (2004) et al (2020) in Algeria as well as Atlabachew and Mamo (2021) in Ethiopia. However, other works have published much higher rates, such as Belhaj and Elamrani (2019) in Morocco.…”

“…Our results are in accordance with numerous work such as Bohayhuck et al (2006) Vásquez et al (2018) in Peru, Belhaj and Elamrani (2019) in Morocco. Unlike the results obtained by Siriken et al (2004) in Turkey, Philips et al (2008 in Australia, Espinoza et al (2020) in Ecuador, Atlabachew and Mamo (2021) in Ethiopia, where the prevalence of Salmonella spp. was between 1.1 and 51.43 %.…”