A study was undertaken to detect the incidence of pathogens of Public Health significance in three varieties of shrimps (flower, White and Tiger) at Kakinada port area in market as well as processing centres samples. Five stages of processing i.e. head removal, sizing and grading, final rinse, arrangement and water filling and packing were selected for analysis. The incidence of Salmonella in samples from market and processing centres is high in flower (36% and 22%), low in tiger (24% and 14%) and moderate in white (28% and 18%). The incidence during processing reduced after first step, remained same after second step and reduced afterwards reaching 8% in all the three varieties. The Staphylococcus aureus counts were (3.9x105 and 4.1x103), (5.8x105 and 5.4x103) and (4.6x105 and 4.8x103) respectively for market and processing centres and after final step of processing the counts were 2.0,2.2 and 2.1x103 in tiger, flower and white. The incidence of Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus in market samples are high in flower (6% and 32%), low in Tiger (4% and 26%) and moderate in White (4% and 28%). The incidence is zero for Vibrio cholerae in processing centres and Vibrio parahaemolyticus is 24%, 16% and 20% for flower. The incidence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus remained the same after first and second steps, reduced during further steps reaching 12%, 8% and 6% in Flower, White and Tiger shrimps respectively.
