Extensive multivariate dataset characterizing bacterial community diversity and Campylobacter contamination level in a large number of conventional broilers carcasses after air chilling and refrigerated storage

The article provides extensive data on the diversity of bacterial communities collected on 480 conventional broiler carcasses from a French slaughterhouse between October 2022 and January 2023. Half of the carcasses were collected from the first slaughter batches and the other half from the later batches to highlight possible microbial cross-contamination between carcasses along the slaughter chain. <i>Campylobacter</i> and the Total Viable Count were quantified on agar plates before and after 7 days of refrigerated storage to estimate the contamination level of broiler carcasses. These data on <i>Campylobacter</i> quantification allow us to assess the prevalence and concentration of this pathogen on chicken meat in France. Broiler bacterial communities were sequenced and characterized before and after storage, offering an understanding of broiler carcass microbial diversity and ecology on large-scale data along the food chain. Amplicons from the region V3-V4 of 16S rRNA were sequenced with Illumina MiSeq technology. Raw sequencing data were deposited in the ANR-21-CE21-0008 ESCAPE project, and the sample accession numbers for the rRNA 16S sequencing range from J017_lib692622_cleaned_R1 to J0176_lib692782_cleaned_R2 for the samples before storage and from J717_lib692783_cleaned_R1 to J7176_lib692988_cleaned_R2 for the samples after storage.