Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Poultry feed is often contaminated with multidrug resistant pathogens which are transferred to the consumers through the food chain. The objectives of the study was to characterise and identify bacterial contamination of poultry feed in small-scale farms of some provinces in South Africa. Eighty two composite feed samples were aseptically collected from selected small scale farms and subjected to morphological and biochemical examination. The DNA extraction was executed using Zymo research kit, the 16S rDNA gene was performed with PCR using Engine DYAD Peltier thermal cycler. Antibiotic susceptibility test was done following disk diffusion method. The Isolates included Enterobacter (3.65%), Escherichia coli (4.87%), Klebsiella (13.41%) and Salmonella enterica (1.21%). Klebsiella was the most prevalent and distributed pathogen within the provinces. The incidence of resistance ranged from 33.3% to 100% with erythromycin being the most potent antibiotic. Lower percentage of resistance was detected in chloramphenicol (26.31%) and ciprofloxacin (31.57%). Although observational part of the study revealed unhygienic conditions on farm storage conditions, the exact source of contamination remains ambiguous. These results confirms the role of poultry feed in spreading multidrug resistant pathogens which negatively affects the productivity, public health and the economy. This necessitates for feed safety awareness in small scale farms and further assessment of feed from the feed mill in an attempt to trace the source of contamination.