1. INTRODUCTION
Food- borne diseases associated with the
consumption of poultry meat and its processed
products are of public health significance
worldwide [1] .The most frequent source of
primary micro flora of meat are skin and feathers,
in addition to digestive and respiratory organs.
Therefore, microbiological quality of processed
carcasses mostly depends on a healthy condition
and external micro flora of an animal [2] and the
hygienic conditions during slaughtering and
processing [3-4].
Bacterial contamination of broiler meat is mainly
confined to the skin and/ or visceral cavity which
occurs during washing, plucking and evisceration.
Different bacterial genera were recovered form
broiler meat [5].As reported previously [6] natural
bacterial flora of the live birds skin reached up
to1.5 × 103 CFU/cm2
,while a product surface count
more than 1.5×106
. Using either rinse technique or
skin maceration techniques indicates an
unsatisfactory process control. The bacterial
contamination of broiler meat increases during
carting, loading and transport where bird become
contaminated with feces, ingesta, litter, feathers
and other debris that carried into the processing
plant.
Drug resistant bacteria and their role in the
transmission of antibiotic resistant gene was
considered as an important public health issue,
Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus spp
particularly staphylococuss sciuri , are considered
as natural reservoir of the methicillin resistance
and they can be transmitted from poultry to humans
through the food chain[7-8] . .Lactococuss garviea
and Kocuria kristinea were reported as an
emerging zoonotic pathogens with an increasing
clinical significance in both human and veterinary
medicine[9-10].
A significant number of poultry meat produced in
the country is from the birds slaughtered in
unorganized sector where chickens are being
slaughtered and dressed in unhygienic condition,
ends to significant contamination rates of market
chicken products, and the majority of the
consumers purchase meat from this sector.
This study was carried out to study the aerobic
bacterial load of frozen chicken meat and to
determine the incidence of some pathogens
associated with food borne diseases in samples
under investigation.