Asian Journal of Research in Animal and Veterinary Sciences

This study was carried out to detect the total bacterial count, coliform count and E. coli count through the production chain of marine fish (fish market, scaling, restaurant before cooking, restaurant after cooking  and cooking and cooling for 24 h)  in Port Sudan, Red Sea State, during the period from September to December 2018. A total of 50 fish samples were randomly selected from marine fish chain. Samples were subjected for bacteriological examination. The study showed that the mean count of E. coli in the five stages of the fish chain was 2.57×10² +0 .6 cfu, the mean coliform count was 2.01 ×10³+ 0 .7 cfu/ g and the mean Aerobic Plate Count (APC) was found to be 3.6×10⁶+ 0.09 cfu/ g. E. coli showed higher mean count (7.58×10²⁾ cfu/ g in the scaling stage. The highest aerobic plate count (117×10⁶) cfu/ g was detected also in the scaling  stage, this may be due to the high number of workers involved in this process without using proper hygienic measurements. The highest coliform count 53.9×10² cfu/ g was detected in the stage of precooking, during this period fish were put on the surface of tables without being cooled. Since high coliform contamination takes place after evisceration, the count was in its highest limit after evisceration in the restaurants. By using ANOVA with confidence interval 95% there was a significant difference between the mean of coliform, APC and E. coli count among the five stages in fish production chain. In conclusion the results showed that the marine fish in Port Sudan city were grossly contaminated by E. coli and other coliform, but adequate cooking can kill all the E. coli and coliform.