Prevalence of Salmonella spp. in Packed and Unpacked Red Meat and Chicken in South of Tehran

Background:: despite of the advances in infectious diseases prevention and food technology, food-borne diseases are considered major problems in developed and developing countries. meat plays a key role in transferring zoonotic diseases to human.objectives:: this study was conducted in south of tehran, iran, to investigate the prevalence rate of salmonella spp. in packed and unpacked red meat and chicken.materials and methods:: a total of 379 packed and unpacked samples including 189 red meat and 190 chicken samples were collected randomly. from each sample, 25 g was separated and treated with 225 ml of buffered peptone water, homogenized and incubated at 37°c for 24 hours. samples were enriched using rappaport-vassiliadis broth and then streaked onto hektoen enteric agar.results:: totally, 86 out of 190 chicken and 38 out of 189 red meat samples were contaminated with salmonella spp. the most isolated serotypes were salmonella thompson (67.7%), s. heaardt (6.5%), s. enteritidis (4.8%), and s. veyle (4%), respectively. in general, the rate of chicken contamination was higher than meat, as 43.3% of packed and 46% of unpacked chicken samples were contaminated.conclusions:: these results confirmed the pervious findings, stating that proper packaging of meat products can effectively decreases the rate of microbial contaminations.