ABSTRACT

Contamination of poultry meat with foodborne pathogens remains an important public health issue, because it can lead to illness if there are malpractice in handling, cooking or post cooking storage of the product. The aim of this study is to investigate the microbial quality of ready to eat fried chicken sold in Umuahia metropolis. A total of five (5) ready-to-eat fried chicken samples was bought from each eatery  in Umuahia metropolis namely, Cruchies, Roots Restaurants, Apples Fast Food, De-Choice, Hoeffers making a total of two replicate samples collected from each eatery and were aseptically packed in sterile polythene bags and transported to the laboratory as being sold and wrapped with transparent nylon by the handlers and kept in a deep cold storage at 4°C and analyzed within 12 hours of collection. 1 g of each fried chicken sample was homogenized in 10 ml of sterile distilled water. 1ml was pipetted from it and added to next blank distilled water, making a dilution of 10-2. Dilutions were made by mixing 1.0ml of the homogenate in 9.0 ml of sterile distilled water to obtain 10-3 dilution. The dilution was then made to 10-4, 10-5 and 10-6. All component or major components of Chicken samples were studied extensively by plating on different agar medium to enumerate types and levels of contamination. A total of Sixteen (16) bacteria isolates belonging to five genera were obtained from Chicken samples and identified as Staphylococcus spp., Escherichia coli, Proteus spp., Bacillus spp., and Klebsiella spp., based on their biochemical reaction and  total of four (4) fungal isolates belonging to two genera were obtained from Chicken samples and identified as Aspergillus specie and Rhizopus specie. The total viable count of bacterial population in all Chicken samples were in the range of 1.43x106 to 4.5x106cfu/g while the total coliform count ranged from 0.9 x105 to 6.7 x 105. The frequency of occurrences of bacteria isolated Chicken samples showed that Proteus spp. 5 (31.3%) was most predominant bacterial isolates associated with Chicken. This was followed by Escherichia coli 3 (18.8%), Bacillus spp. 3 (18.8%) and Staphylococcus aureus 3 (18.8%) Klebsiella spp. 2 (12.5%), was least predominant while the fungal frequency occurrence showed that Aspergillus specie 2(100%) was predominant while Rhizopus 1 (25%) specie was least predominant. In conclusion, this study presented the level of microbial spoilage and contamination status of ready-to-eat fried chicken meat sold in different restaurants in Umuahia, Abia State and the role of such contaminated meat in causing food poisoning amongst other foodborne related illnesses therefore, Food especially fried chicken products meant for human consumption should be microbiologically safe otherwise it can serve as route for the transmission of foodborne diseases.