ABSTRACT Self-monitoring procedures are adopted by food industries to ensure the quality and safety of final products, considering hygiene and processing criteria. This study aimed to evaluate contamination in chicken processing, considering the microbiological criteria proposed by self-monitoring systems. Environmental samples from reception, slaughtering and processing were collected from three chicken slaughterhouses (Sl1, Sl2, Sl3), and subjected to microbiological analysis to enumerate hygiene indicators microorganisms: mesophilic aerobes, enterobacteriaceae, coliforms and Escherichia coli. The obtained counts were converted to log10, compared by ANOVA (p<0.05) and self-monitoring microbiological criteria for each slaughterhouse were considered. In... |