Influência de diferentes formas de criação (caipira, semi-caipira e industrial) sobre contagem de micro-organismos indicadores de higiene em aves abatidas no Triângulo-Mineiro.

Abstract

The production of chicken meat in Brazil underwent several evolutionary processes and today the country is the largest exporter and the second largest producer of chicken meat in the world. To maintain itself as a great power in the production of chicken meat, the country has to ensure that its production is of good quality to meet the requirements of the countries that import this product. Thus, in order to ensure this quality one of the methods used is the monitoring of hygiene indicator microorganisms that aims to identify failures in the chicken meat production process. This is a reliable method because high counts may indicate the presence of pathogenic microorganisms in the meat or the production of a product outside the quality standards required by legislation and / or the consumer market. Nowadays, Brazilian consumers have demanded a high quality chicken meat with characteristic flavors, such as the campesino type chicken meat, which many of these consumers refer to the affective memories of their past, where it was common for families to produce hens for their own consumption . Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the impact that different forms of chicken breeding (caipira, semi-caipira and industrial) have on the counts of hygiene indicator microorganisms in a slaughterhouse in the Triângulo-Mineiro. For this purpose, 97 carcass samples were collected from the different breeding systems (32 from hickory type, 35 from semi-hickory type chicken and 30 from industrial type chickens), at 2 points on the production line (A = 3 minutes after bleeding of the animal and before scalding; B = immediately after the exit from the pre-cooling tank). The method of collecting these samples was to rinse the carcass with saline solution, and the techniques used to perform the counts of hygiene indicator microorganisms were: Plate Plate Agar (PCA) for Mesófilos Aerobes (AM) and of counting the most probable number for total coliforms (CT) and thermotolerant (CTT). It was observed that the carcasses of wild hens have lower AM contamination than the carcasses from the industrial and semi-industrial systems in stage A of slaughter (P <0.05). For all breeding systems, a reduction in AM contamination between stage A and B (P <0.05) was observed, but in the latter stage there was no difference in the average contamination between the carcasses of the different breeding systems. Although there was no difference between breeding systems and contamination levels for CT, for CTT, Industrial type chicken carcasses at point B are mostly classified at the level of contamination I (0 to 10 NMP / ml ), thus suggesting that they are less contaminated than the others. It was also observed that all the analyzed carcasses were within the Brazilian legislation in relation to contamination by thermotolerant coliforms (≤104 MPN / g). It is concluded that there is a difference between the initial contamination level of the carcass depending on the breeding system used and these levels of contamination are equal after the pre-cooling of the carcasses, indicating difficulty in reducing the contamination of the carcasses from the farmed breeding system. This information can be used to define the order of slaughter of the animals and to optimize programs of self-control within the establishment, in order to continuously improve the quality of the product offered to the consumer.