Microbial contamination associated with beef slaughter and boning has been investigated using traditional culture dependent approaches. However, conventional counting methods have disadvantages of detecting only cultivable bacterial groups that may be a small subset of the true microbial population. This study investigated the microbiology in the boning room of an integrated (abattoir A) and a fragmented (abattoir B) Australian beef export abattoirs using culture independent 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing coupled with total viable count (TVC). Transmission of microbial populations during processing of carcases onto beef trim was monitored and compared between the two abattoirs. The results showed that the abattoirs produced beef trim with a mean TVC of 2.64–2.70 log₁₀ CFU/cm². Initial counts of microbes on the chilled carcases entering the boning room were <1.5 log₁₀ CFU/cm² and the environmental surfaces had ≤2.0 log₁₀ CFU/cm² throughout the boning room. Profiling of 16S gene sequences demonstrated that the contamination of boned products (beef trim) may be a result of contamination accumulating from environmental surfaces that are regularly in contact with beef trim. The 16S data also showed that the bacterial communities on the carcases and trim shared similar community composition with microbiota on environmental surfaces at varying proportions depending on the day of processing. Bacteroidales, Clostridiales, Enterobacteriales, Lactobacillales and Pseudomonadales were predominantly present in the bacterial communities in both abattoirs. However, the changes in relative abundance of these bacteria through the boning process varied between the abattoirs. The findings from this study suggested that the transfer of bacterial contaminants in the beef cattle boning room can be dynamic, and a 16 s rRNA gene sequencing-based approach can improve our understanding of the sources of contamination in the boning environment.

已经使用传统的依赖于养殖的方法研究了与牛肉宰杀和剔骨相关的微生物污染。但是，常规计数方法的缺点是仅检测可能是真正微生物种群的一小部分的可培养细菌群。这项研究使用独立于培养的16S rRNA基因扩增子测序结合总存活数（TVC），研究了整合的（屠宰场A）和破碎的（屠宰场B）澳大利亚牛肉出口屠宰场的微生物学。在两个屠宰场之间监测并比较了在屠体加工到牛肉条上的微生物种群的传播情况。结果表明，屠宰场生产的牛肉条的TVC平均为2.64–2.70 log ₁₀ CFU / cm ²。进入去骨室的冷藏箱体中的微生物初始计数<1.5 log ₁₀ CFU / cm ²，环境表面≤2.0log ₁₀ CFU / cm ²整个去骨室。对16S基因序列的分析表明，带骨产品（牛肉条）的污染可能是由于定期与牛肉条接触的环境表面积累的污染物造成的。16S数据还显示，屠体和装饰物上的细菌群落与环境表面上的微生物群具有相似的群落组成，比例取决于处理的日期。两种屠宰场的细菌群落中主要存在细菌，梭菌，肠杆菌，乳杆菌和假单胞菌。然而，在屠宰场之间，通过去骨过程这些细菌的相对丰度变化是不同的。