Investigations of influence of disinfection procedures on hygiene in private slaughterhouse

The objective of this work was to establish, on the grounds of obtained results for the total number of bacteria before and after completed disinfection, whether there are differences in the efficiency of disinfection performed by a professional and disinfection carried out by an unqualified employee in a private slaughterhouse. The material used in these investigations were samples of wet-dry swabs taken over a course of five weeks, before and after disinfection carried out by an unqualified employee and the skilled professional, from the following: the knife used for evisceration, the floor in the evisceration area, from the table serving for bristle removal, and from the floor underneath the bristle removal surface. The wet-dry swabs were taken according to the procedure described in the standard method ISO 18593 (Microbiology of food and animal feeding stuffs - Horizontal methods for sampling techniques from surfaces using contact plates and swabs). Analyzing the taken samples, the total number of bacteria was determined using the standard method ISO 4833 (Microbiology of food and animal feeding stuffs - Horizontal method for the enumeration of microorganisms - Colony-count technique at 30°C). Disinfection was carried out using a chlorine preparation (sodium dichloroisocyanurate dihydrate) in a concentration of 0.02% and for an exposure period of 30 min. The results were interpreted on the grounds of the border values in evaluating the hygiene of the equipment, tools, and work surfaces, presented in Commission Decision 471/2001/ EC. The results of the investogations have shown that the disinfection performed by the skilled professional was more efficient than the disinfection performed by the unqualified person, as the total number of bacteria was significantly smaller (p