Food-Borne Pathogens And Microbiological Spoilage In Different Ungulate Species Hunted In The Eastern Italian Alps

Assuring hygiene and quality of hunted game meat is relevant for public health, and should therefore be undertaken before game meat is marketed. Standardisation of the analytical methods and specific microbiological thresholds should be implemented, also considering the remarkable diversity in hunting traditions, conditions and facilities. The present work was aimed at investigating the general hygienic status of and detecting gross field-associated risk factors for microbiological contamination in hunted ungulate carcasses in North-Eastern Italy. For this purpose - in absence of official microbiological thresholds - we applied a protocol adapting the official procedure in use for livestock carcasses. Our results, on 280 wild ungulates sampled during two hunting seasons, showed very low prevalence of food-borne pathogens (only Listeria monocytogenes) and allow to identify some basic risk factors for microbial spoilage: in particular (1) seasonality, with higher contamination in spring-summer; and (2) game species, with higher contamination levels in chamois probably due to the harsher hunting conditions - as opposed to other ungulate species.