Flavobacteria and pseudomonads are traditionally known to cause spoilage in food and food products (Forsythe, 2000, pp. 96–98 and 101–103). In the literature on meat spoilage, ‘flavobacteria’ is used as a generic name for yellowpigmented rods (Hendrie et al., 1969). Usually, pathogens such as Salmonella and Campylobacter are associated with poultry, but large numbers of other bacteria often associated with spoilage are found on poultry carcasses. These include many so-called flavobacteria that may originate from the poultry itself or from the abattoir environment and which are responsible for spoilage (Hang’ombe et al., 1999). Mai & Conner (2001) found that the incidence of members of the genus Pseudomonas and flavobacteria on chicken carcasses was 17 and 16 %, respectively. The incidence of flavobacteria on poultry is much higher than on other fresh meat (Nychas & Drosinos, 1999). Over the past decade, many changes have taken place in the taxonomy of the family Flavobacteriaceae, and the revised genus Flavobacterium comprises mainly aquatic bacteria that are not known in food microbiology (Bernardet et al., 1996). Several former Flavobacterium species were transferred to the novel genus Chryseobacterium (Vandamme et al., 1994) and novel species have been described, including Chryseobacterium joostei (Hugo et al., 2003), Chryseobacterium defluvii (Ka¨mpfer et al., 2003), Chryseobacterium miricola (Li et al., 2003) and, most recently, Chryseobacterium formosense (Young et al., 2005), Chryseobacterium daecheongense (Kim et al., 2005a) and Chryseobacterium taichungense (Shen et al., 2005). ‘Chryseobacterium proteolyticum’ was described by Yamaguchi & Yokoe (2000), but its name has not been validly published. In addition, two Chryseobacterium species, Chryseobacterium meningosepticum and Chryseobacterium miricola, have been reclassified into the novel genus Elizabethkingia (Kim et al., 2005b). In general, these Chryseobacterium species are widely distributed in water, soil and the clinical environment, but they are also found in food specimens, such as milk, meat, poultry and fish (Jooste & Hugo, 1999).