Prevalence of Sulfite-reducing clostridia in some salted marketed fish products

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 1 Department of Food Hygiene and Control, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Benha University 2 Directorate of Veterinary Medicine, Qalubiya Governorate, Egypt

2 Department of Food Hygiene and Control, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Benha University

3 Food Hygiene Department, Animal Health Research Institute, ARC, Egypt.

Abstract

Salted fish products are one of desirable commercial seafood in Egypt, especially in the spring season in the period of spring Eid as an Egyptian tradition. Besides that, however, some sulfite-reducing anaerobic bacteria do not potentiate a public health hazard, it can cause a marked spoilage of the salted fish proteins. Therefore, ninety random samples of salted Mugil cephalus (feseikh) and sardine, forty-five of each, collected from various retailers in Benha city to investigate the prevalence of sulfite-reducing clostridia focusing on Clostridium perfringens as a toxigenic food poisoning anaerobe. Out of the examined samples, 26.7% were contaminated with sulfite-reducing anaerobes; where, C. perfringens was the most detected species with incidence of 22.2% and 15.6% for feseikh and sardine samples with mean count (CFU/g) of 3.5x102 and 1.1x102, respectively; revealing feseikh samples of higher contamination level than sardine samples; whereas, Clostridium botulinum was not detected in any of the examined samples. Referring to the Egyptian standards, 81.1% of examined samples were fit for human consumption regarding with sulfite-reducing anaerobic count. So, high hygienic standards should be followed during collection of raw fishes all over the salting and preservation cycle.

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