Bacterial surface counts and visually assessed cleanliness of carcasses from hunted roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)

We determined bacterial numbers on the surfaces of the body cavities of 352 hunted roe deer and related them to the location of shot wounds, visually assessed cleanliness of body cavities and time from evisceration to sampling, which coincided with time of carcass processing. Body cavities were swabbed with sterile sponges and Total Aerobic Counts and counts of Enterobacteriaceae determined by cultural microbiology (most-probable-number methods); the presence/absence of the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella sp. and Listeria monocytogenes was assessed by antigen tests of enrichment cultures. The Total Aerobic Counts (TAC) and counts of Enterobacteriaceae (EB) (mean +/- standard deviation) in the body cavities before skinning (1-12 days after hunting) were 5.5 +/- 1.2 and 3.6 +/- 1.3 log cfu/cm(2). Salmonella was detected in none and Listeria monocytogenes in 16/352 body cavities (antigen-detection kits). In 59.9 % of the carcasses, both entry and exit wound were before the 7th rib (i.e. the abdominal organs were not inflicted). We found perforation of both flanks in 3.7 % of the carcasses. The categorization according to the location of shot wounds was significantly associated with the level of the visually assessed cleanliness of body cavities. The TAC and counts of EB increased significantly with increasing number of days from killing to sampling. The association of TAC with visible contamination of body cavities with gastric or faecal matter was less strong. The finding confirms that the number of days between evisceration and processing of the carcass has a major impact on the bacterial contamination of roe deer carcasses.