Impact of poultry slaughter house modernisation and updating of food safety management systems on the microbiological quality and safety of products

The aim of the present article is to study the impact of poultry slaughter house modernisation and updating of food safety management systems on the microbiological quality and safety of products. In this respect efforts were made to ascertain if automation, in certain stages of production, affected the type of hazards and the number of critical control points, as well as the microbiological quality of carcasses and the final products. The comparison of HACCP plans indicated that the automation of the various stages of production did not influence the type of hazards and the number of critical control points. The automation of slaughter plant led to the reduction of contamination, a fact that was shown from the microbiological analysis results, which indicated a reduction of the micro-organisms under study (total bacterial count, coliforms and Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus) by approximately 1 log cfu/g in the various stages of slaughter and standardisation procedure.