Three Gram-staining-negative, rod-shaped, non-spore-forming, non-motile, oxidase-positive, yellow pigmented and aerobic bacterial isolates designated 8_R23573, 9_R23581 T and 10_R23577 were isolated from raw chicken at a broiler processing plant in Bloemfontein, South Africa. A polyphasic taxonomic approach was used to determine their exact taxonomic identities. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the three strains belonged to the genus Chryseobacterium, exhibiting the highest similarities to Chryseobacterium shigense DSM 17126 T (98.6-99.2 %) and Chryseobacterium luteum DSM 18605 T (98.3-98.7 %). The most abundant quinone was menaquinone MK-6 and the predominant cellular fatty acids were iso-15 : 0, iso-17 : 1v9c, iso-17 : 0 3-OH and summed feature 3 (iso-16 : 1v7c and/or iso-15 : 0 2-OH), which supported the affiliation of the strains to the genus Chryseobacterium. The DNA G+C contents of the strains were 36.9, 36.7 and 36.6 mol% respectively. The DNA-DNA hybridization results gave relatedness values ranging from 78.8 to 87.2 % among the three strains and 23.4 to 56.1 % to the two nearest phylogenetic neighbours C. shigense DSM 17126 T and C. luteum LMG 23785 T . On the basis of the data from this polyphasic study, the three strains are concluded to represent a novel species of the genus Chryseobacterium for which the name Chryseobacterium carnipullorum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 9_R23581 T (5LMG 26732 T 5DSM 25581 T ).The genus Chryseobacterium belongs to the family Flavobacteriaceae (Bernardet et al., 2002;Bernardet, 2011). It was described by Vandamme et al. (1994) to accommodate six species formerly classified within the genus Flavobacterium, namely Chryseobacterium balustinum, Chryseobacterium gleum, Chryseobacterium indologenes, Chryseobacterium indoltheticum, Chryseobacterium meningosepticum and Chryseobacterium scophthalmum and was later amended (Kämpfer et al., 2009). The type species is C. gleum. Members of the genus Chryseobacterium include psychrotolerant and proteolytic spoilage micro-organisms that are widely distributed in food sources such as milk, fish, meat and poultry (Hugo et al., 2003;de Beer et al., 2005 de Beer et al., , 2006 and occur in a variety of ecological niches such as soil, water, sludge, plants, and human and fish clinical specimens (Hugo et al., 2003;Bernardet et al., 2005Bernardet et al., , 2011Hugo & Jooste, 2012).In 2006 the genus Chryseobacterium consisted of only 10 validly named species. Since then the genus has undergone significant and rapid expansion and, at the time of writing, it comprises 61 species with validly published names (Bernardet et al., 2006) and more continue to be described (Euzéby, 2012). This can be ascribed to the readily available and improved phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and molecular identification methods used in the polyphasic taxonomic approach.During the course of the characterization of chryseobacterial strains isolated from raw chicken in a previous study (de Beer, 2005) at a poultry processing plan...