Abstract:
Assessment of bacterial contamination in beef from the abattoir, slaughter slab and butcheries of Amuria town council was conducted with objectives of finding out the dominant contaminating bacteria in beef and to find out the hygienic practices that could be contributing to beef contamination. This research study employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches where a cross-sectional design was used to randomly collect a total of 60 samples from the abattoir, slaughter slab and butcheries for microbial lab analysis. An observation checklist was used during the study to document the hygiene status of this beef supply chain. The results of this study were analysed using B-SOP 1 procedure and it was found out that E. coli was the dominant (66.7%) contaminant in all the three locations i.e. abattoir, slaughter slab and butcheries. E. coli contamination in beef was found more coexistent with Salmonella (20%) than Shigella (13.3%). However, the percentage of E. coli was the highest in the butcheries (80%) and lowest in the slaughter slab (50%). E. coli & Salmonella contamination was higher in the slaughter slab (30%) but had similar contamination level in the abattoir and butcheries (15%) respectively. E. coli & shigella contamination was the highest in the slaughter slab (20%) and lowest in the butcheries (5%).
The results of this study based on the chi-square analysis at 5% level of significance indicated that there was no significant difference in contamination across the abattoir, slaughter slab and butcheries for E. coli, salmonella and shield as all the chi-square values were below the critical value of = 3.841. This suggest that the poor handling and hygiene practices observed in this study may be widespread across the entire beef supply chain.
Basing on these findings, its recommended that regular microbial examination be conducted in the high risky places of the supply chain such as butcheries, slaughter slab and that there should be implementation of strict hygiene and beef handling protocols through the entire beef production and supply chain.
