Microbiological Evaluation of Imported Frozen Mussels and Locally Harvested Black Bea Mussels

Mussels are increasing in popularity and availability throughout the world, becoming a part of the international menu, in various forms, leading to a growing interest in their food safety profiling, which remains in the spotlight of current research.The microbiological quality of frozen mussels sold in retail stores was compared with that of locally harvested, fresh mussels.Samples of frozen, processed mussels and Black Sea mussels were analyzed in terms of coliforms and aerobic plate count (APC), according to the national standards for APC and coliforms’ enumeration method (SR ISO 4833/2003 and SR ISO 4832:2009, respectively). The results were statistically analyzed using univariate un-paired t tests. We considered p<0.05 to be statistically significant. SPSS statistical software was used for data analysis.The aerobic plate counts were higher for processed, frozen mussels than for the samples of locally harvested Black Sea mussels. The difference is considered to be extremely statistically significant (p < 0.0001, t= 5.7465, DF=9). The coliforms’ counts were also higher for the frozen mussel samples, than for the samples of locally harvested Black Sea mussels, but the difference was not statistically significant (p= 0.0641, t = 1.9724, DF=9).The overall results indicate that locally harvested Black Sea mussels are less contaminated than imported, processed, frozen mussels.