Incidence of Staphylococcus aureus in chicken meat in Aswan city,Egypt

Poultry meat is highly palatable, digestible, desirable and nutritious for all ages in addition to low price in comparison to beef meat. Therefore a total of 100 Fresh and frozen thigh and breast chicken meat samples were collected from Aswan city supermarkets, abattoirs, butcher's shops for evaluation of the incidence of contamination with Staph. aureus. The results revealed that the incidence of isolated Staph. aureus from frozen chicken thigh, breast ,fresh chicken thigh and breast were 40, 36, 32 and 32%; This result at frozen chicken meat more than fresh chicken meat may be due to excess handling of frozen meat and leave to more time at surfaces with un clean utensils before freezing. While Staphylococcal count in the same examined samples were7.55x102, 5.8x102, 4.11x103, 2.53x102; respectively. The results were reversed and therefore modified by confirmation of the results by using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), revealed that fresh chicken thigh samples were positive for sea gene of Staph-aureus strains, frozen chicken meat samples were positive for sec gene of Staph- aureus and fresh chicken thigh, frozen chicken breast samples were negative for sea, seb, sed and sea genes of Staph. aureus.