الملخص الإنجليزي
Safety and quality issues are the two major concerns related to poultry products. Safety issues are associated with consumer health and include chemical, biological and physical contamination of food. Quality issues reflect the degree of excellence of food products in terms of the eating and nutritional value and affect pricing and consumer acceptance of the product. In this study a total of 196 poultry products were analyzed for their microbial quality in terms of the hygienic standard represented by the levels of total aerobic plate counts and coliforms, and the frequency of contamination with some of the more common food pathogens, particularly Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus and E. coli. Antibiotic resistance patterns of bacteria recovered from the poultry samples were determined using the standard disk diffusion method toward a range of antibiotics. In addition, the presence of antibiotic residues in samples was surveyed using a screening kit designed to detect antibiotic residues in poultry and meat products. Physical quality parameters including color, pH, water holding capacity, sarcomere length and shear force were compared between 10 fresh, 10 chilled and 10 frozen products using standard methods. The structure of the muscle fibers of fresh and frozen samples and of samples stored chilled for three days, five days and 20 days, were observed using a scanning electron microscope.
Results showed that all the samples were within the Omani standard for microbiological limits, part 1 (No.1089/1998) in terms of total aerobic plate counts. Frozen products showed significantly lower counts when compared with fresh and chilled samples. Staphylococcus aureus was the most frequently isolated potential pathogen followed by E. coli and then Salmonella spp.. Among the samples surveyed for antibiotic residues, 8% were positive. All of the isolated bacterial strains were resistant to at least one type of antibiotic included in the study with 95% of the isolates being resistant toward tetracycline. In contrast, tobramycine and chloramphenicol were found to be the most effective antibiotics, as least resistance was demonstrated towards these drugs by the bacteria tested. Chilled products showed better quality in terms of tenderness and water holding capacity when compared with fresh or frozen samples.
