The Effect of Chlorine and Bromine on the Amount of Bacteria on the Skin of Raw Poultry Products

The purpose of this project is to measure the ability of different antimicrobials to eliminate or reduce the amount of bacterial colonies in relation to the amount of bacterial colonies on untreated chicken. The Center for Disease Control reported that, between 1998 and 2008, the annual amount of food borne illnesses in humans caused by bacteria on poultry was 653,622. Two of the most common ways that chicken is protected against bacteria is by washing the chicken in chlorine or bromine. The researcher wanted to test the effectiveness of these methods. The two different treatments, chlorine and bromine, were tested on raw chicken by submerging small amounts of the chicken skin into them. The chicken was placed into the treatments for one minute, then soaked in water. The water was then swabbed onto petri dishes and placed into an incubator for two days. The petri dishes were then scanned using an app called Colony Counter to count how many bacterial colonies were present in each petri dish. The average number of bacterial colonies for the petri dishes that were not treated with anything was 54.833. The bromine trials had almost double the control, with 104.02 bacterial colonies. The chlorine trials had over triple the amount with 164.18 bacterial colonies. The results suggest that bacterial colonies are more likely to grow when subjugated to antimicrobials, but this result was most likely produced due to an error, either procedural or technological