Vol. 12, Special Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Seuli Saha Roy

Abstract:
At present, in Tripura, there is no organized poultry slaughterhouse and people follow the traditional methods for slaughtering of poultry. The improper hygiene and sanitary measures followed in these traditional chicken shops favour easy invasion of microorganism in chicken. The present study was undertaken to assess the bacteriological quality of chicken and hygienic aspects of chicken vendor shops and the antibacterial resistance pattern of the isolated bacteria, in order to recommend ways to minimize public health hazards. A total of 110 randomly cut pieces of chicken, 110 water samples used for washing the carcasses, and swab samples from cutting knife, butchers’ hands and chicken cutting wooden surface were collected from 110 retail shops of Tripura. The samples were subjected to total viable count (TVC), total coliform count (TCC) and total staphylococcus count (TSC). The isolation and identification of organisms of public health significance was done and antibiogram of the isolated microbes was also performed. The overall mean TVC, TCC and TSC in chicken samples were 7.59±0.070, 5.5±0.076 and 4.27±0.039 log10cfu/g, respectively. The water samples had mean values for TVC, TCC and TSC as 11.06±0.036, 9.2±0.026, 6.12±0.050 log10cfu/ml, respectively. The values of TVC, TCC and TSC of swab samples collected from cutting knife, butchers’ hands and wood surface also indicated high contamination and act as a source of cross contamination to chicken. The chicken samples were predominantly contaminated with E. coli (68.18%), Staphylococcus aureus (39.09%), Proteus spp. (35.83%) and Salmonella spp. (16.36%). Most of the isolates were resistant to more than one group of antibiotics such as enrofloxacin, chloramphenicol, oxytetracycline, ampicillin, cefotaxime/clavulanic acid, amikacin and methicillin, whereas, majority of isolates were susceptible to gentamicin. The present study emphasized that the microbial quality of raw chicken was poor. The presence of antibiotic resistant pathogens in chicken is a potential threat to the public health.