Abstract:
The objective of this study is to determine the sources of E.coli and Faecal Streptococci contamination in RTE chicken meat for the proper control. The efficiency of cooking process was determined. The core temperature of the chicken meat from the cooker must be above 80 degree Celsius for over 1 minute which is enough to destroy both microorganisms. The contamination of both microorganisms was not observed. The post-cooked products were determined for the contamination at each production step, including chilling, dicing and packing to finish product. The sampling was done 3 times a day (7 a.m., 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.) for 25 days during February to April, 2007. The prevalence were 2.66% of both E.coli and Faecal Streptococci after chilling step and after dicing step were 1.33 and 9.33%, respectively. E.coli was non-detectable at finish product while Faecal Streptococci was presented at 1.33%. The production environment at each production step such as the surface of the machines, workers and the condensate were sampling to determine the correlation with the contamination in products. The contamination of E.coli and Faecal Streptococci were found at the surface of the machines in all of studied production steps. The E.coli contamination had the correlation between product and environment at in-feed transfer belt at chilling step. There was the significant relation (p <0.05) at superene plate at 7 a.m. and highly significant (p <0.01) at 10 a.m. which had Pearsons coefficient of 0.935 and 1.00, respectively. The Faecal Streptococci contamination had the correlation at dicing step with the highest prevalence at belt of the dicing machine (29.33%) which directly contact to the product. Moreover, 10 sources of tap water and 4 spots of ambient air in production line have been determined for the contamination. It was found that tap water had non contamination while the Faecal Streptococci was detected from ambient air in front of cooker and chiller, center of dicing room and packing area with the prevalence of 14.66, 6.66, 2.66 and 12.00%, respectively.