Bacground: Food safety predominantly focuses on the control of microbial contamination of foods and contaminated food may pose a serious threat to human health.

Objective: To examine the microbiological quality and safety of cooked meats and fish in Ethiopia.

Materials and methods: A total of 265 samples of meats and fish with berbere spice added or not were collected from Ethiopia between Jan. 2013 to Dec. 2017. The food samples were analysed using colony count for aerobic colony count and S. aureus, spread method for yeasts and moulds enumeration, Nordic Committee on Food Analysis Method No. 44 for coliforms and ES ISO 6579:2002 for Salmonella and Shigella species. The data was analysed using SPSS 20.0.

Results: The unsatisfactory levels for aerobic colony count, total and thermotolerant coliforms, E. coli, moulds and yeasts counts for the total samples were 12.1% (N=32), 11.7% (N=31), 1.9% (N=5), 3.4 % (N=9), 1.2% (N=3) and 1.9% (N=5), respectively. Among the categories of three ready-to-eat foods examined, meats, fish and Poultry, respectively, had the highest and lowest microbial contamination. Microbial quality of packaged samples with berbere spice added was good compared with unpackaged samples with berbere spice not added.

Conclusions: About 21% of the meats and fish samples had unsatisfactory microbial quality because of bacterial indicators or fungi. However,   Salmonella, Shigella spp. and S. aureus were not detected in the samples tested. Processing under hygienic conditions, adding berbere to foods and packaging enhances the quality of ready to eat stuffs.

Keywords: Microbial profile; Cooked meats; Coliforms; Berbere spice; Fungi