Ten-gram meat samples were excised from the thawed meat and homogenized with 90 mL sterilized water using a vortex oscillator (IKA MS2, Japan) for 2 min. Serial dilutions (1 mL sample blended with 9 mL sterile saline) were prepared. To obtain total bacterial counts, two proper dilutions of the homogenized meat solution were spread-plated onto Plate Count Agar (PCA) in triplicate, and incubated at 37 °C for 48 h. The microbial counts were expressed as log CFU/g.