Escherichia coli isolates from meat and abattoirs environment in Egypt: molecular characterization and control by nanosilver particles

ABSTRACT

Three hundred samples, including meat from the slaughtered carcass and water, air samples, and swabs from the floor, wall, and employees' hands, were collected from five municipal abattoirs spread across several Egyptian provinces. The Escherichia coli was isolated from floor swabs, meat, air, wall, hand, and water samples. Serotyping of the recovered isolates clarified the presence of various serotypes, including enterohemorrhagic serotypes (O₁₁₁: H₄, O₁₂₈: H₂, and O₁₂₇: H₆) and enterotoxigenic serotypes (O₄₄: H₁₈ and O₁₂₅: H₂₁). The isolates were resistant to cefotaxime (100%), amoxiclav (80%), then rifampin (66.7%). The stx1 gene, stx2 gene, eaeA gene, blaCMY2 gene and iss gene were detected in 10-80 % of the isolates. Nanosilver (AgNPs) showed that 12.5 ppm was the lowest concentration that prevented bacterial growth. It was observed that 12% of workers wore a clean white coat, only 24% washed their hands between activities during work, only 14% used soap for hand washing, and 42% utilized the same knife for meat and its offal.

KEYWORDS:

• Escherichia coli
• characterization
• abattoir
• meat
• nanosilver

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend their gratitude to King Saud University (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) for funding this research through Researchers supporting Project number (RSP-2023-R406).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2023.2243828

Ethical approval

The experimental protocols were approved by the Animal Care and Use of laboratory animal’s committee of Alexandria University. All methods followed relevant guidelines and regulations (Ethics Committee, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Alexandria University, Egypt. The study was carried out in compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines.

Author contribution

AMM, MAN, FSS, RGT, and MMS Designed the study, collected the samples, analyzed the data and conducted the bacterial isolation and the biochemical and antimicrobial susceptibility tests. MAN, FSS, and AMM performed the PCR assays. M.M.S, R.G.T, A.M.M, E.E, G.E.B, and M.A.N wrote the manuscript. H.M.A, M.H.M, and A.A. revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.