Assessment of physical facilities and detection of post-mortem lesions in public abattoirs in selected districts of Wolaita zone, Ethiopia

Abstract Background Participatory abattoir appraisals and observational analysis were conducted in selected local abattoirs in the Wolaita, Ethiopia with the aims of assessing (i) the physical facilities available in these abattoirs and (ii) the detection of post-mortem gross lesions upon routine meat inspection that may have been due to infectious diseases. Methods Our study surveyed public abattoirs to evaluate meat inspection services and facility standards. Gross lesions in slaughtered animals were categorized by consistency, prioritized using a scoring matrix, and analyzed for anatomical distribution. Concordance in prioritization was assessed with Kendall’s W test. Results Our investigation revealed that almost all public abattoirs surveyed had substandard physical facilities for conducting meat inspection services. According to statistics from the studied abattoirs, 26.6% of slaughtered animals exhibited at least one grossly visible lesion, of which 65% were considered by the local veterinary inspectorate to have potential animal or public health significance. Among the identified lesions, 10% were classified as having a ‘soft’ consistency (e.g., cystic or caseous/abscess), while 5% were categorized as ‘hard’ (e.g., fibrotic, firm, fibrous, or mineralized). The remaining 85% of lesions were uncategorized. Using a prioritization matrix scoring method, the overall mean proportional priority rank data indicated that ‘mineralized/calcified’ hard lesions were assigned the highest priority (0.67), followed by ‘cystic’ lesions (0.58). The evidence for group concordance in prioritization was moderate (W = 0.275; p = 0.019). Regarding anatomical distribution, the survey groups ranked gross lesions in the lungs and associated mediastinal and bronchial lymph nodes as the top priority (0.67). Lesions in the small intestine and mesenteric lymph nodes (0.33) were ranked second, followed by lesions in the hepatic lymph nodes (0.42). There was strong concordance in the overall mean ranking of these lesion sites within the survey groups (W = 0.518; p = 0.0001). Some of the gross lesions detected in this study may pose a potential zoonotic risk (e.g. tuberculosis). Conclusions This study highlights how infrastructural deficiencies and operational procedures in abattoirs can contribute to poor quality and potentially diseased meat entering the human food chain, features which need to be addressed locally to safeguard public health.