Abstract
This survey was conducted to evaluate the microbiological quality of raw beef and pork products from January to December in 1999. A total of 107 beef and 157 hog carcasses were collected from two abattoirs located in Seoul. The result showed that beef carcasses had an average bacterial loading around 139,000 bacteria/$\textrm{cm}^2$ of carcass surface, indicating a little bit higher count than the results reported in USA and Australian meat. However, overall hygienic status was found to be acceptable for all examined carcasses because 84.4% of product rated excellent, good or acceptable comparable to USA of 91.6% and Australia of 88%. The analysis of data on overnight-chilled to weekend-chilled carcasses indicated that the microbiological growth occurred in the chiller during the weekend chill with increases in total viable count from 130,000cfu/$\textrm{cm}^2$ to 400,000cfu/$\textrm{cm}^2$. Qualitative testing for escherichia coli, EC + MUG was used as a most probable number (MPN) method along with the petrifilm method. The average of MPN/$\textrm{cm}^2$ of E coli biotype 1 was 29MPN/$\textrm{cm}^2$ for beef carcasses and 1,100 MPN/$\textrm{cm}^2$ for hog carcasses, respectively. However, 41% of beef and 16.3% of hog carcasses were shown to be less than < 3 MPN/$\textrm{cm}^2$ in E coli biotype 1 examination. Although salmonella enteritis, S typhimurium and E coli O157:H7 were all negative, listeria monocytogenes was recovered from only one hog surface samples of the 89 carcasses tested.