ABSTRACT
Milk has good quality protein and is a unique substance in that it is consumed as fluid milk with minimal processing and also it is the raw material used to manufacture a wide variety of products. Milk is susceptible to contamination by many pathogenic microorganisms, which result in infection and threat to consumer’s health. The aim of this study was to determinate occurrence of pathogenic microorganisms in raw milk in four seasons from different locations in Egypt, the obtained counts results showed that the samples gave the lowest Total Plate Count (TPC) of 3x105cfu/ml in winter’s samples. While, the summer's sample showed the highest TPC of 5.8x107cfu/ml. E. coli count ranged from 2x102cfu/ml to 5.8x 105cfu/ml which the lowest count was noticed in winter’s samples. Staphylococcal count ranged from 2.7 x 103cfu/ml (winter sample) to1.28 x 106cfu/ml (another sample in the same season). These results indicated poor hygienic standard of raw milk from uncontrolled environments and the increased public health risk of those consuming raw milk from such uncontrolled sources and all these tests consume time but with Cultureindependent methods that are based on protocols where total DNA (or RNA) is directly extracted from the substrate it can save time. Coupled with a global analysis, these methods make it possible to study the total diversity from the bulk extract in a single step.