Prevalence and Diversity of Arcobacter spp. in Retail Chicken Meat in Turkey

Arcobacters are food and waterborne pathogens associated with human and animal infections. The objective of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and diversity of Arcobacter spp. in commercially sold chicken meat in İzmir region of Turkey. For this purpose, 100 samples including legs (n = 40), 17 chicken quarters (n = 17), drumstickers (n = 16), breasts (n = 11), wings (n = 10), and carcasses (n = 6) were collected from different retail markets. A total of 65 isolates were confirmed as Arcobacter spp. from 55 samples by genus-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The prevalence of Arcobacter spp. was 32.5, 81.3, 64.7, 72.7, 83.3, and 50% for legs, drumstickers, chicken quarters, breasts, carcasses and wings, respectively. Based on the multiplex-PCR, most of the isolates were identified as A. butzleri (n = 45, 80%), followed by A. cryaerophilus (n = 2, 3.6%), A. skirrowii (n = 1, 1.8%) and 17 isolates (30.9%) could not be identified at the species level.