Study on Salmonella contamination in poultry lean meat and meat with skin in Tabriz slaughter houses

Some microorganisms such as Salmonella, Listeria and Campylobacter cause foodborne diseases in human, which some control and food safety measures are not able to prevent. However, it is necessary to devise new systems for achieving this target. The purpose of this study was to determine Salmonella contamination through cross contamination of meat in slaughtering premises. For this study, a total of 50 samples were taken from slaughterhouses and transported to the laboratory of food hygiene where they were divided to 2 groups; the first group consists of lean meat, while the other group consists of meat with skin. Each sample (25 g) was prepared according to Standard methods of Institute of standards and Industrial Research of Iran. The McNemar test for qualitative data was used to compare the two groups. According to the results obtained from the 2 groups; 17 samples from first group and 10 samples from second group (meat with skin) were positive. A comparison of these two group showed a significant difference (p<0.05). The results show that the rate of cross contamination with salmonellosis disease in slaughterhouses was high and it proves that they should be omitted by properly skinning and cooking the contaminant.   Key words: Salmonella, poultry meat, skin, infection.