Abstract:
Milk and milk products have important role in feeding the rural and urban population
owing to its high nutritional value. However, it is subjected to contamination whenever
there are poor hygienic practices. A cross sectional study was conducted to determine the
microbial load of E.coli and its antimicrobial susceptibility pattern from raw cow‟s milk
in North Mecha district from December 2021 to July 2022. One stage cluster sampling
method was used to collect pooled raw milk samples from selected households. A total of
180; 60 milk, 60 hand and 60 equipment swab samples were collected hygienically and
processed to investigate E.coli by using conventional culture method. Escherichia coli
were isolated from 41.7, 13.3 and 11.7% of milk, milking equipment and hand swab
samples respectively. The overall prevalence of E.coli was 22.2%. The occurrence of
E.coli was significantly associated with farm hygiene and smoking of milking
equipment‟s. The mean count of E.coli from raw milk was 3.76±1.16
log
10
CFU/mL,with minimum and maximum value of 1.48 and 5.69log
CFU/mL respecti
vely. All isolates (40) of E.coli were resistance to ampicillin and erythromycin. Whereas,
95, 92.5, 65 and 55.5% of E.coli isolates were susceptible to gentamicin, chloramphenico
l, nalidicic acid and co-trimazole respectively. Based on this finding, only gentamicin and
chloramphenicol were the most effective treatments for E.coli, while nalidicic acid and
co-trimazole were not working at normal dose. This finding concludes that there was a
gap on hygienic practices and E.coli count exceeded the limits of food safety standards.
Therefore, every personnel engaged in all dairy activities need to be gain training about
the whole sanitation and hygienic practices.
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