Effect of Poor Post-Slaughter Handling on Physicochemical and Microbial Quality of Fresh Broiler in Bangladesh

The slaughtering method and post-handling play an important role in meat processing. Countries followed different slaughtering methods, post-handling, and preservation techniques for post-slaughtered meat. Stress-oriented slaughtering, unhygienic handling, processing, and improper preservation are triggering factors of rapid oxidation and microbial proliferation in meat during storage. Bangladesh is a Muslim-oriented country but many vendors do not follow the halal slaughtering, and handling of meat in an unhygienic way due to a lack of food safety knowledge. Thus, the study aims to assess the effect of poor post-slaughtering handling practices on the physiochemical properties which include moisture, ash, protein content, fat content, drip loss, cooking loss, water holding capacity, pH, fat oxidation, color, heme iron, mineral content, and microbial qualities of fresh samples by total plate count during 0 days, 15 days and 30 days frozen storage at -18ºC. The live broiler was purchased randomly and slaughtered instantly from different slaughter shops in Jashore City, Bangladesh. The laboratory analysis was performed following the standard method of meat sample analysis. The outcome of this study revealed that heme iron content, minerals like Ca, Fe, Zn, and lightness values decreased significantly (p < 0.05) during 30 days of storage at -18 ºC. Post-handling had no significant effect (p > 0.05) on protein and ash content at 0 and 15 days of storage but slowly decreased with increasing storage time. The continuous increase in pH, cooking loss, and TBARS value indicate rises in lipid oxidation noticed in all samples, especially during 16-30 days of frozen storage (p < 0.05). The total viable count significantly raised (p < 0.05) and reached the highest value of 7.27 log10 CFU/g and 7.44 log10 CFU/g respectively after 15 days and 30 days of frozen storage compared to fresh condition. Bacteriologically meat samples were of very poor quality during storage compared to fresh ones.