Study of alterations in the microbial counts of scalder and chiller water in poultry slaughter house

The soaking of bird carcasses in the hot water of scalder in order to loosen the feathers inside the follicles and facilitate the subsequent plucking is considered to be one of the critical points of the poultry slaughter house. Chilling and washing of the carcasses are the other critical points which can cause cross contamination. Thus the purpose of the present study was to determine the alterations in the microbial counts of scalder and chiller water at different times. For this reason, 50 ml samples of scalder and chiller water were collected separately at times zero, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 hours following slaughter with 6 replicates for each sample and the total mesophilic and thermophilic bacterial counts of scalder and the total mesophilic and psychrophilic bacterial counts of chiller were investigated. The results indicated that the mesophilic counts of scalder had decreased significantly over time but the thermophilic bacterial levels had increased significantly (p