Contamination of meat and meat products with pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms is one of the most important challenges facing the meat industry, that results in a range of human health problems and economic losses. This work aimed to identify the occurrence of Pseudomonas spp. especially Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) in some processed and ready-to-eat meat products in Sohag governorate. A total of 200 random meat product samples; minced beef meat, luncheon, burger, and sausage (50 of each) were purchased from different markets in Sohag governorate, Egypt over a period of 12 months from November 2020 to October 2021. Pseudomonas spp. was suspected in 32 (15%) of the meat products examined samples using the colony morphology on Cetrimide agar, represented as follows; 30%, 18%, 6%, and 10% in minced beef meat, luncheon burger, and sausage, respectively. Using the morphological and biochemical methods, P. aeruginosa was suspected in 12 isolates (37.5%) with an incidence of 12/200 (6%) of the total examined samples. The PCR results revealed that only 8/12 (66.7%) of the suspected isolates encoded the 16S rDNA gene of P. aeruginosa with an incidence of 4% of the total examined samples, 4 (50%) of which were detected in the minced beef meat samples, 2 (25%) in the sausage samples while in the luncheon and burger P.aeruginosa was identified in only 1 sample (12.5%) for each.
Keywords: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, meat products, PCR, 16S rDNA gene.