in ready to eat meat products from Zambia: phenotypical and genomic characterization of isolates.

The contamination of ready to eat foods (RTE) products due to could compromise the products safety becoming a great risk for the consumers. The high presence of in RTE products has been described worldwide, but few data are available about these products from African countries. The aims of this study were to report the presence of in Zambian RTE products, providing genomic characterization and data on similarity with African circulating strains using whole genome sequencing (WGS). A total of 304 RTE products, produced by different Zambian manufacturers, were purchased at retail, from major supermarkets located in Lusaka, Zambia, comprising 130 dairy and 174 meat products. was detected only in 18 (10.3%) RTE meat products of the 174 samples tested. The MLST analysis grouped the 18 isolates in 7 clonal complexes (CCs): CC1 ( = 5), CC2 ( = 4), CC9 ( = 4), CC5 ( = 2), CC121 ( = 1), CC155 ( = 1), and CC3 ( = 1). According to the cgMLST results, several clusters were detected, in particular belonging to hyper-virulent clones CC1 and CC2. Regarding the virulence factors, a complete Pathogenicity Island 3 (LIPI-3) was present both in the CC1 and CC3, in addition to LIPI-1. Several resistance genes and mobile genetic elements were detected, including Stress Islands, the cassette and _qac transposon, plasmids and intact prophages. Despite being a first preliminary work with a limited number of samples and isolates, this study helped to increase existing knowledge on contaminated RTE products in Zambia, confirming the presence of hyper-virulent CCs, which could play an important role in human diseases, posing a public health concern for consumers.