Assessment of Baried-Parker Agar as Screening Test for Determination of Staphylococcus aureus in Poultry Meat

Baird-Parker agar with egg yolk/tellurite emulsion (BPA) is widely accepted as a medium for the enu-meration of Staphylococcus aureus in foods. Howerver, it is not vompletely selective and colonies of other genera of species could be similar to those of Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, the strains of Staphylococcus aureus that are lecithinase negatrive could go unnoticed. Both facts could affect the counts. The aim of this study was to dtermine whether the enumeration of the colonies with the typical morphol-ogy of Staphylococcus aureus on BPA is sufficien to quantity this species in poultry meat. Forty chiken carcasses were tested for Staphylococcus aureus by surface plating using BPA, Results indicate that the predictiv value of the morphoogy of the colonies of BPA is 85.71% and 68.42% for typical and atypical colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, respectively. However, Staphylococcus aureus counts (after identification) and counts of typical colonies did not show any significant differences(P>0.05) and are significantly(P<0.001) correlated (r=0.996).These results suggest that , for screening purposes. enumeration of Staphylococcus aureus from poultry meat does not require any identification of stains. resulting in a saving of time and money.