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For several years, Campylobacter has remained the leading cause of food-borne zoonosis in Europe. Poultry is the main risk factor for campylobacteriosis. Controlling contamination of poultry meat by Campylobacter is a major public health issue. In addition to the public health issues, the economic issues are also significant, in particular due to the recent introduction of a process hygiene criterion on a European scale having an impact on the import and export of poultry. Campylobacter does not multiply in the food production chain but it survives relatively well. The conditions encountered along the food chain influence the composition of the microbiota of food and food environments and constitute stresses (cold, hot, oxygen) to which Campylobacter must adapt. Until now, the behavior of Campylobacter has been evaluated and studied in single-species culture (thermal inactivation, survival in the cold, in the presence of oxygen) without considering the possible interactions within the microbiota of the foodstuff. However, this pathogen coexists on poultry meat with other microbial communities, causing interactions of the antagonism type (e.g., competition) or even mutualism (e.g., cooperation). Until now, microbial risk assessment predicts the behavior of pathogens generally without taking into account the microbiota of the food, but its composition depends on the conditions encountered along the food chain and influences the survival of pathogens until the end. consumer's plate.
In this thesis project, we propose to answer the following scientific question: is the presence or absence of Campylobacter on chicken carcass correlated with the presence of certain endogenous bacterial species of meat? If so, is this correlation explained by bacterial interactions?