Foodborne disease caused by Salmonella is an important public health concern worldwide. Animal-based food, especially poultry meat, is the main source of human salmonellosis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and epidemiology of Salmonella contamination in raw poultry meat commercialized in China. Following the principle of systematic review, 98 sets of prevalence data were extracted from 74 publications conducted in 21 Chinese provincial regions. The random-effect model was constructed for subgrouping analysis by meat category, preservation type, and geographical location. The prevalence levels differed from high to low among raw poultry meat, including chicken, 26.4% (95% CI: 22.4–30.8%); pigeon, 22.6% (95% CI: 18.2–27.8%); duck, 10.1% (95% CI: 5.3–18.2%); and other poultry meat, 15.4% (95% CI: 12.0–19.5%). Prevalence data on the preservation type revealed that chilled poultry meat might be more likely to experience cross-contamination than non-chilled poultry meat in China. The distribution map of Salmonella for raw poultry meat showed that a higher prevalence level was found in the Shaanxi, Henan, Sichuan, and Beijing regions. All subgroups possessed high amounts of heterogeneity (I² > 75%). The scientific data regarding the differences in prevalence levels between meat category, preservation method, and geographical region sources might be useful to improve specific interventions to effectively control the incidence of Salmonella in poultry meat.

Time-lapse microscopy is an essential tool for capturing and correlating bacterial morphology and gene expression dynamics at single-cell resolution. However state-of-the-art computational methods are limited in terms of the complexity of cell movies that they can analyze and lack of automation. The proposed Bacterial image analysis driven Single Cell Analytics (BaSCA) computational pipeline addresses these limitations thus enabling high throughput systems microbiology. BaSCA can segment and track multiple bacterial colonies and single-cells, as they grow and divide over time (cell segmentation and lineage tree construction) to give rise to dense communities with thousands of interacting cells in the field of view. It combines advanced image processing and machine learning methods to deliver very accurate bacterial cell segmentation and tracking (F-measure over 95%) even when processing images of imperfect quality with several overcrowded colonies in the field of view. In addition, BaSCA extracts on the fly a plethora of single-cell properties, which get organized into a database summarizing the analysis of the cell movie. We present alternative ways to analyze and visually explore the spatiotemporal evolution of single-cell properties in order to understand trends and epigenetic effects across cell generations. The robustness of BaSCA is demonstrated across different imaging modalities and microscopy types. BaSCA can be used to analyze accurately and efficiently cell movies both at a high resolution (single-cell level) and at a large scale (communities with many dense colonies) as needed to shed light on e.g. how bacterial community effects and epigenetic information transfer play a role on important phenomena for human health, such as biofilm formation, persisters’ emergence etc. Moreover, it enables studying the role of single-cell stochasticity without losing sight of community effects that may drive it.

To compare the prevalence and antibiotic resistance rate of Listeria monocytogenes in livestock and poultry (beef, pork and chicken) meat between China and the European Union (EU), a meta-analysis was conducted. Ninety-one out of 2156 articles in Chinese and English published between January 2001 and February 2022 were selected from four databases. The prevalence of L. monocytogenes in livestock and poultry (beef, pork and chicken) meat in China and Europe was 7.1% (3152/56,511, 95% CI: 5.8–8.6%) and 8.3% (2264/889,309, 95% CI: 5.9–11.0%), respectively. Moreover, a decreasing trend was observed in both regions over time. Regarding antibiotic resistance, for the resistance to 15 antibiotics, the pooled prevalence was 5.8% (95% CI: 3.1–9.1%). In both regions, the highest prevalence was found in oxacillin, ceftriaxone and tetracycline, and a large difference was reported between China and the EU in ceftriaxone (52.6% vs. 17.3%) and cefotaxime (7.0% vs. 0.0%). Based on the above, it remains a significant challenge to enforce good control measures against the meat-sourced L. monocytogenes both in China and in the EU.