Microbiome-Informed Food Safety and Quality: Longitudinal Consistency and Cross-Sectional Distinctiveness of Retail Chicken Breast Microbiomes
Shaoting Li, David A. Mann, Shaokang Zhang, Yan Qi, Richard J. Meinersmann, Xiangyu Deng
Abstract
Chicken has recently overtaken beef as the most-consumed meat in the United States. The growing popularity of chicken is accompanied by frequent occurrences of foodborne pathogens and increasing concerns over antibiotic usage. Our study represents a proof-of-concept investigation into the possibility and practicality of leveraging microbiome-informed food safety and quality. Through a longitudinal and cross-sectional survey, we established the chicken microbiome as a robust and multifaceted food microbiology attribute that could provide a variety of safety and quality information and retain systematic signals characteristic of overall processing environments.