Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate the microbial community structure and resistance genes on water, surface of floor and slaughtering equipment. The water and the bacteria collected on floor and surface of slaughtering equipment by sterile gauze swab were sampled in hanging, slaughtering, scalding, dehairing, eviscerating rooms of a large-scale poultry slaughterhouse in Zhejiang Province. The microbial community structure was analyzed based on 16S rRNA V3-V4 by Illumina Hiseq 2500, while the nine major categories of 24 resistance genes were tested by PCR method. The results showed that Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Actinobacteria were the predominant phyla on water and the surface of floor and slaughtering equipment in the different areas of the slaughterhouse, their relative abundance were 27.55%-88.99%, 3.45%-59.78%, 4.35%-31.78%, respectively. The dominant genera included Acinetobacter, Psychrobacter, Thermus, Pseudomonas and Shewanella, accounting for 46% of the total taxa. The drug resistance gene detection rate of sulⅠ, sulⅡ and qnrS was 100%, while blaTEM, tetB and aadA1 was 94.4%, and floR and mecC was 88.9%. It was concluded that there were some conditional pathogenic bacteria and spoilage bacteria with many kinds of bacterial resistance genes on water and the surface of ground and slaughtering equipments in different areas of the slaughterhouse.

Key words: poultry slaughterhouse, microorganisms, drug resistance gene, high throughput sequencing