Comparison of Sampling Methods and Implications for Bacterial Decontamination of Poultry Carcasses by Rinsing

This study showed that the whole carcass rinse and the stomaching or blending of excised skin techniques for sampling broilers, as commonly used, result in the isolation of comparable numbers of aerobes and Enterobacteriaceae . However, these data also show that all three methods recover only a very small percentage of the total bacteria present on broiler carcasses. Large numbers of bacteria were still recovered from the fortieth rinse of a single carcass, indicating that increased rinsing after bacteria become firmly attached to the carcass will only result in a slight reduction of the total bacterial load present, and will not result in a meaningful improvement in bacterial quality of the carcass.