## 1 Introduction  
According to the latest scientific report of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on the trends and sources of zoonoses and foodborne outbreaks in the European Union (EU), campylobacteriosis is the most commonly reported foodborne gastrointestinal infection in humans in the EU and has been so since 2007 [1]. Estimates of the overall human health impact of bacterial agents transmitted commonly through food, place _Campylobacter_ as the first or second most common agent after nontyphoidal _Salmonella_ in Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan [2; 3; 4]. The notable absence of notified _Campylobacter_ outbreaks in China and some other populous countries, like India, could be attributed to the lack of mandatory surveillance by the established foodborne disease surveillance system or to the underreporting (e.g., mild symptoms and a smaller number of cases seeking health care) and/or underdiagnosis (e.g., lack of testing and diagnostic accuracy) of the disease, the lack of epidemiological surveillance data connecting causative agents of outbreaks, and the different dietary habits on those countries [5; 6; 7]. Major food categories of interest for _Campylobacter_ occurrence include mostly meat and meat products (i.e., animal carcasses and fresh/ready-to-eat (RTE), cooked and fermented products), as well as milk and milk products (i.e., raw and pasteurized milk and dairy products including cheese) [1], although the prevalence of the disease-causing _Campylobacter_ spp. is significantly increased in poultry meat samples compared to other types of meat or compared with milk and dairy products [8; 9; 10; 11]. The strong-evidence foodborne association of campylobacteriosis outbreaks with the consumption of raw or incompletely thermally processed poultry meat is already well known and has been emphatically documented nowadays [8; 10; 12], while the foodborne illness due to the presence of _Campylobacter_ spp. in poultry has been classified as the costliest pathogen-meat combination from an economic perspective [13]. Regardless of the fact that today poultry is considered the main reservoir for _Campylobacter_ spp., the latest epidemiological evidence suggests pathogen transmission to humans through a pathway implicating cattle as the primary reservoir of _Campylobacter_, infecting people via the fecal-oral route and the consumption of contaminated chickens [14]. World poultry meat consumption refers to the consumption of meat from chickens (broilers), turkeys, and other avian species (e.g., ducks, geese). Available data compiled from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) reveal an increase in worldwide annual poultry meat consumption per capita by more than 5.0 kg in the past 20 years; from 10.8 kg in 2000 to 16.2 kg in 2020 [15]. Chickens are by far the main protein source of animal origin for humans in terms of livestock animals reared and slaughtered for their meat [15], so the previous rates represent roughly the chicken meat being consumed on a global basis. The different thermodetant employees validly described to date are summarized in Supplementary Table S1 [16; 17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29; 30; 31; 32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 53; 54]. Of these, _Campylobacter jejuni_ and _C. coli_ are the two most important species mainly detected in foods of animal origin [55], Ref. [56] (p. 1670) that grow well at 41.5 \({}^{\circ}\)C in microaerobic conditions. These two species account for almost 90% of the reported human campylobacteriosis cases, with over 80% of the occurring gastrointestinal infections being attributable to _C. jejuni_ and the rest about 10% of infections attributed to _C. coli_[56] (pp. 1669-1670), [57]. Therefore, until recently it was well established and beyond any reasonable question that _C. jejuni_ is the dominant species among all other _Campylobacter_ spp. isolated from chicken meat samples.