The aim of this study was to determine the changes of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in faeces of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients compared to healthy subjects. SCFAs such as pyruvic, lactic, formic, acetic, propionic, isobutyric and butyric acids were analyzed by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). This study showed that the level of acetic, 162.0 µmol/g wet faeces, butyric, 86.9 µmol/g wet faeces, and propionic acids, 65.6 µmol/g wet faeces, decreased remarkably in IBD faecal samples when compared with that of healthy individuals, 209.7, 176.0, and 93.3 µmol/g wet faeces respectively. On the contrary, lactic and pyruvic acids showed higher levels in faecal samples of IBD than in healthy subjects. In the context of butyric acid level, this study also found that the molar ratio of butyric acid was higher than propionic acid in both faecal samples. This might be due to the high intake of starch from rice among Malaysian population. It was concluded that the level of SCFAs differ remarkably between faecal samples in healthy subjects and that in IBD patients providing evidence that SCFAs more likely play an important role in the pathogenesis of IBD.

a b s t r a c tTwelve species of common marine fish consumed by Malaysians were collected from local wholesale market in Malaysia; the mercury concentrations in muscle and liver samples were determined by cold vapour atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The mercury concentration in the samples, expressed in lg g À1 dry weight. It was 0.45 for short-bodied mackerel, 0.04 for scad, 0.04 for narrow-bodied Spanish mackerel, 0.13 for black pomfret, 0.50 for long tail tuna, 0.03 for greasy grouper, 0.09 for chacunda gizzard shad, 0.06 for yellow-banded scad, 0.05 for eastern little tuna, 0.09 for delagoa treadfish bream, 0.10 for giant perch and 0.00 for sardine's muscle tissue. Among the fishes analyzed, long tail tuna had the highest level followed by short-bodied mackerel. Significantly lower levels (P < 0.05) of mercury were found in liver tissues. Total mercury concentration in liver tissues were as follow; 0.03 for short-bodied mackerel, 0.02 for scad, 0.05 for narrow-bodied Spanish mackerel, 0.10 for black pomfret, 0.49 for long tail tuna, 0.03 for greasy grouper, 0.03 for chacunda gizzard shad, 0.04 for yellow-banded scad, 0.02 for eastern little tuna, 0.09 for delagoa treadfish bream, 0.01 for giant perch and 0.01 for sardine. This study indicates that commonly consumed fish from Malaysia have concentrations of mercury below the permissible levels stated in the US FDA guidelines.

A study was conducted to compare the effect of halal slaughter without stunning and gas stun killing followed by bleeding on residual blood content and storage stability of rabbit meat. Eighty male New Zealand white rabbits were divided into two groups of 40 animals each and subjected to either halal slaughter without stunning (HS) or gas stun-kill (GK). The volume of blood lost during exsanguination was measured. Residual blood was further quantified by determination of haemoglobin content in Longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle. Storage stability of the meat was evaluated by microbiological analysis and measuring lipid oxidation in terms of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). HS resulted in significantly higher blood loss than GK. HS had significantly lower residual haemoglobin in LL muscle compared to GK. Slaughter method had no effect on rabbit meat lipid oxidation at 0, 1, and 3 d postmortem. However, at 5 and 8 days of storage at 4°C, significant differences (p<0.05) were found, with meat from the GK group exhibiting significantly higher levels of MDA than that from HS. At day 3, greater growth of Pseudomonas aeroginosa and E. coli were observed in the GK group (p<0.05) with B. thermosphacta and total aerobic counts remained unaffected by slaughter method. At days 5 and 7 postmortem, bacterial counts for all tested microbes were affected by slaughter method, with GK exhibiting significantly higher growth than HS. It can be concluded that slaughter method can affect keeping quality of rabbit meat, and HS may be a favourable option compared to GK due to high bleed out.

A total of 78 samples of street foods from different states in Malaysia were examined for the presence of Klebsiella pneumonia. K. pneumonia contamination was recorded in 32% of the samples examined. The frequency of the K. pneumonia isolates containing plasmids was shown to be 48%. Susceptibility testing showed that all isolates were highly resistant to ampicillin (100%), erythromycin (100%), rifampicin (100%), streptomycin (96%) and sulfamethoxazole (80%), but susceptible to chloramphenicol. RAPD proved to be the most effective technique in discriminating the K. pneumonia isolates since dendrogram constructed using the combination of 4 primers could differentiate 25 isolates of K. pneumonia to 25 strains. This is the first report that revealed the occurrence of K. pneumonia in street foods sold in Malaysia.

Appropriate and safe antibacterial agents able to decontaminate meat surfaces have long been big concern of meat industry. In an attempt to manage beef carcass contamination, spray wash treatments utilizing three concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2%) of acetic, lactic, propionic and formic acids were performed to evaluate their efficacy in reducing numbers of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Staphylococcus aureus on meat tissues. The procured beef pieces of freshly slaughtered animals were decontaminated with hot water and then inoculated with E. coli O157:H7 and S. aureus individually which then were spray washed with organic acids separately. The total plate count of the treated samples showed that the populations of bacteria decreased after being exposed to organic acids. Spray wash of formic acid resulted in the highest reduction of both bacterial species on meat surface. Significantly, higher log reductions were obtained for S. aureus than E. coli O157:H7. It was concluded that organic acids are highly effective in decontaminating meat surfaces and organic acids are shown to be safe, simple, efficient, and cheap modality of meat decontamination which can be highly recommended for industrial scales.

Unlike Europe (particularly, Italy and Spain), where a number of studies have been conducted on the stressful effects of transport on rabbit welfare, few studies have been conducted on transportation of rabbits under hot, humid tropical conditions experienced in countries like Malaysia. We studied the effects of transportation in hot humid tropical conditions of Malaysia on physiometabolic changes in New Zealand white rabbits. Eighty experimental animals were divided into two groups of 40 bucks each and transported for either 3 or 1 h. Transportation caused a significant upsurge of aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase and creatine kinase activities (p<0.001) though did not significantly affect lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity (p = 0.0706). Both transportation periods caused elevation in plasma glucose levels, lactic acidosis and dehydration as evidenced through elevated packed cell volume and plasma protein concentration. It was concluded that regardless of the duration, transport of rabbits under hot humid tropical conditions, resulted in heat distress since the rabbits showed hyperglycemia, hypercalcemia, lactacidemia, lymphocytopenia, dehydration and increase in blood enzyme activities.

The objectives of our study were to investigate the Salmonella species contamination in various types of ready‐to‐eat street‐vended dishes or drinks, to isolate Salmonella spp. from clinical samples and to assess the possible relationship between the serotypes isolated from these two different environments. The isolates were characterized by their antibiotic resistance, plasmid profiles and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) sequences. A total of 24 salmonellae, belonging to seven different serotypes, were isolated from 129 different street‐vended foods and drinks and 12 clinical samples (rectal swabs). The encountered serotypes from street foods were Salmonella Biafra (n = 8), Salmonella Braenderup (n = 3) and Salmonella Weltevreden (n = 1), and from clinical samples were Salmonella Typhi (n = 8), Salmonella Typhimurium (n = 2), Salmonella Paratyphi A (n = 1) and Salmonella Paratyphi B (n = 1). The results showed no similarities in the types of Salmonella serotypes from street food and clinical samples examined. The Salmonella strains were resistant to one or more of the 14 tested antibiotics. Seventeen isolates harbored plasmids, with plasmid sizes ranging from 3.0 to 38.5 MDa. RAPD fingerprinting with primers OPAR3 and OPAR8 produced a combination of 21 fingerprint patterns. The dendrograms generated for the S. Biafra and S. Typhi showed strains of the same serotypes but of very different types of sample and location of sampling clustered together, indicating the possibility of cross contamination during food handling.

An effectiveness and comparative study of cleanup sorbents used in dispersive solid phase extraction (DSPE) for the determination of avermectins, including emamectin (EMA), abamectin (ABA), doramectin (DOR), moxidectin (MOX), and ivermectin (IVE), was performed. Three different types of cleanup sorbents, alumina (Al), primary and secondary amine (PSA) and octadecyl (C18), were used to remove the matrix interference in fish samples. Homogenised fish samples were extracted with acetonitrile, magnesium sulphate anhydrous and sodium chloride. The cleanup sorbents were separately applied to the supernatant during the DSPE procedure; the mixtures were shaken and centrifuged, and the supernatant was dried. The extracts were reconstituted with acetonitrile/water and quantified by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry with electrospray ionisation in the positive mode with two product ions that were monitored by selected reaction monitoring. The performance of each cleanup sorbent was observed for its accuracy and precision in a spiked blank sample at a concentration of 5 μg kg−1. The combination of the cleanup sorbents PSA and C18 was found to be the most effective in the cleanup of the fish samples. In the validation tests, the detection limit was in the range of 0.3 μg kg−1 to 0.4 μg kg−1, and the quantitation limit for all avermectins was 1 μg kg−1 in the linearity range of 1-15 μg kg−1. The recoveries of avermectins were 91.9-102.5%, with a relative standard deviation lower than 19%.