The impacts of organic acid and essential oil supplementations to diets on the microbiological quality of chicken carcasses

This study was conducted to determine the effects of organic acid combination (for each kg of the diet, 200 mg lactic acid, 250 mg formic acid, and 80 mg propionic acid) or essential oil (for each kg of the diet 15 mg Origanum onltes) supplementation on the microbiological quality of broiler chickens. In this study, a total of 800 broiler chickens were divided into four groups as control, organic acid supplemented group, essential oil supplemented group, and essential oil and organic acid supplemented group. At the end of a- 42 day of growth period, for microbiological analyses 20 birds from each group were randomly chosen. Then chickens were slaughtered and microbiological analysis, including determination of Total Viable Count (TVC), the numbers of coliforms, Enterobacteriaceae and Stapylococci/Micrococci were carried out on the neck skin of carcasses. In addition, the incidence of Salmonella spp. on the carcasses for each group was determined. Results showed that significant reductions were observed in the numbers of bacteria investigated for both supplemented groups. The Total Viable Count observed (TVC) on the neck skin was 5.90 log cfu gon the control group, however it was 5.07 log cfu gfor essential oil supplemented group and 5.58 log cfu gfor organic acid supplemented group. The incidence of Salmonella spp. was also lower in organic acid group 0.20 or essential oil supplemented group 0.44 than control group 0.82. The results showed that supplementation of organic acid or essential oil could be beneficial to reduce microbiological load thus preventing food poisoning and early spoilage of chicken meat.