Bekele MegersaAhmad HamedyHika WaktoleEndalu Mulatu2026-11-112026-11-112026https://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/9474Ensuring the safety of meat products is a significant public health concern in many developing countries, where inadequate slaughterhouse infrastructure and poor hygienic practices result in microbial contamination of meat. A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate infrastructure, operational facilities, and hygienic practices across 30 municipal abattoirs in central Ethiopia, together with the identification of pathogenic Escherichia coli. A structured questionnaire, checklist, and direct observation were used to collect information related to infrastructural conditions, operational facilities, and hygienic practices among 30 municipal abattoirs in central Ethiopia. Microbiological sampling was conducted in some selected abattoirs, including carcass swabs, workers’ hand swabs, knife swabs, water samples, fecal samples, and hide samples. Standard microbiological plating method were employed to determine the aerobic plate count and fecal coliform count, while whole-genome sequencing was performed to investigate the genetic relatedness of E. coli O157:H7 from carcasses with the other source E. coli O157:H7 as well as occurrence of antimicrobial resistance and virulence gene investigated. The results indicated significant deficiencies in abattoir infrastructure and operational facilities. More than 50 % of the municipal abattoirs faced deficiencies in terms of required facilities such as hot water sources, equipment sterilizers, chilling rooms, and proper personal hygiene facilities, designated and welldesigned hand-washing stations, showers, and restrooms, skin and bone storage rooms. In 70 % of municipal abattoirs, pest control facility, wildlife and stray dog control, and deep freezers were lacking, provision of personal protective equipment, separate room for skinning, evisceration, and viscera cleaning. Deficiencies in hygiene and food safety practices were also observed. In all municipal (100%) abattoirs, equipment sterilization between uses was not practiced, refrigerated transport for carcasses was unavailable and routine water quality testing was not conducted. Approximately, in three-fourths of the municipal abattoirs carcass processing took place on floor, and demonstrated inadequate enforcement of personal protective equipment use and lacked separate green offal, viscera and red meat transportation. Significant gaps in workers’ hygiene and safety practices were identified. The use of aprons (44.37%) and head covers (45.77%) was reported by less than half of the workers, although 63.38% reported consistently wearing the clean personal protective equipment available to them. Task alternation and equipment sharing were common, with 50% of workers engaging in these practices. Sterilization of knives between each use was not practiced in all abattoirs workers, and only 44.37% of workers performed regular medical checkups. About 35.21% workers practiced hand washing with soap while only 9.15% of respondents use gloves during the slaughtering process. Among the respondents, 52.11% of the workers had received on job food safety training. The study showed that the overall mean aerobic plate count of 6.12 log₁₀ CFU/cm2 and fecal coliform count of 4.58 log₁₀ CFU/cm2 on beef carcasses. Carcass swabs had a significantly higher mean aerobic plate count (6.12 log₁₀ CFU/cm²) compared to knife (5.54 log₁₀ CFU/cm²; p=0.006) and hand swabs (5.19 log₁₀ CFU/cm², p=0.000) while knife swabs showed a higher mean fecal coliform count (5.05 log₁₀ CFU/cm²) than carcass swabs (p = 0.005). Water samples from municipal abattoir from Holeta, Batu and Gelan were contaminated with E.coli.In addition, prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 was 1.4% and 1.1% in feces and on carcasses, respectively Most importantly, E. coli O157:H7 was found to be negative in water, hide, hand and knife samples. Genomic analysis indicated clonal relationships among isolates from the same abattoirs and genetic diversity among isolates from different abattoirs. All isolates had multiple virulence factors such as adherence factors (eae, iha, and tir), type III translocated proteins (espA, espB, espJ, espP, etpD, nleA, nleB, and nleC), outer membrane proteins (chuA, ompT, and traT), toxins (astA, ehxA, and toxB), and other pathogenicity-related factors (gad, iss, katP, and terC). All strains carried the stx2 subtype stx2c and were completely susceptible to tested antimicrobial agents no antimicrobial resistance genes were detected. In conclusion, this study revealed substantial deficiencies in abattoir infrastructure and hygiene practices. The microbiological analysis indicated that the microbial load on beef carcasses exceeded acceptable limits both in aerobic plate count and fecal coliform count. The microbial quality of workers hand and knife were also beyond acceptable limit. The findings also indicated that contact with fecal material during evisceration is a potential source of carcass contamination with E. coli O157:H7. Therefore, hygienic practices, abattoir infrastructure, and food safety regulations must be the future focus areas in the action plan to combat carcass contamination.en-USAbattoirHygienic PracticesMeat SafetyPublic HealthEthiopiaThesis