Prevalence of Aeromonas spp and their virulence factors isolated from frozen chicken meat products

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Animal Health research institute

2 Department of Food Hygiene, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Benha University. Animal Health

3 Food Hygiene Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Banha university

4 Animal Health research institute, Shebin El koom branch

Abstract

A total of hundred samples of frozen chicken products represented by breast, thigh, nuggets and burger (25 of each) were randomly collected to study the prevalence of Aeromonas spp and their virulence factors in the examined products. the study showed that the mean values of psychrotrophic count were 8.17×103± 1.42×103, 1.95×104± 2.06×104, 3.63×104± 0.89×104 and 7.58×104± 1.16×104, respectively, and the mean values of Aeromonas counts were 9.34×102± 2.01×102, 1.66×103± 0.28×103, 2.90×103± 0.43×103 and 5.25×103± 0.69×103 for examined frozen breast, thigh, nuggets and burger. 12 isolates of A. hydrophila were specific for 16S rRNA gene of which 9 isolates were positive for aerolysin (aerA) and 10 of isolates were positive for haemolysin (ahhl), with incidence of 75% and 83.3%, respectively. The results achieved in the current study showed contamination of chicken products by Aeromonas spp. So in the field of food microbiology it is necessary to give more consideration to Aeromonads because they have the ability of toxins production, survival under low temperatures and growing in a wide spectrum of environments. So, hygienic measures should be adopted to control microbial contamination.

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