Isolation of Endospore-Forming Bacteria from Milk Collected from Selected Cities of Pakistan

Milk production, processing and consumption are connected to human nutritional requirements that have been inferred through the current investigation conducted involving the microbiological examination of milk samples from different cities of Pakistan. Objective: To investigate the isolation of endospore-forming bacteria from milk collected from selected cities of Pakistan. Methods: Several milk samples were collected from Lahore, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura for microbiological evaluation and antibiotic susceptibility patterns. Isolation and characterization employing different morphological and biochemical tests was done which showed a heavy load of Bacillus endospore-forming bacterial species. Results: The results revealed that all the samples were contaminated with endospores-forming bacteria. Highly effective drugs in this study included Azithromycin, Rifampicin and Chloramphenicole resulted in 97%, 95.5% and 95.5% bacterial sensitivity respectively whereas Novobiocin was found to be 88.8% and Amoxilin showed 84.4% efficacy against bacterial Isolates. Metronidazole and Cefaxitin were found to be the least sensitive up to 44.4% and 17.7% respectively. Cefaxitin and Metronidazole were the most resistant medicines recorded at 83.3% and 66.6% respectively. In the case of metals, the bacterial sensitivity was found to be much lower i.e. at 1% Zn concentration, the highest recorded sensitivity was 51.1%. Bacterial Isolates were found to be highly resistant against Fe and Pb (1% metal concentration) and showed 0% and 2.2% sensitivity respectively. Conclusions: It was concluded that for the eradication of harmful endo-sporogenic bacteria in drinking milk, samples should be obtained employing efficient and safe standard antibacterial protocols for milk processing.