New facts revealed about campylobacter bacteria
The BBC has revealed in an investigation that campylobacter cases are on the increase; about half a million infections occur per year. In response, the Food Standard Agency stated that it was time for the poultry industry take responsibility for correcting this common source of food poisoning.
Food Standard Agency says that somewhere between sixty to eighty percent of all campylobacter bacteria originate with chicken. Chief Executive of the FSA Catherine Brown gave an interview to BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts, and said that the cost and danger to humans was unacceptable.
She went further in stating that the industry must be held responsible to bring a solution forward. While some progress is being made, there must be more urgency to find an answer. As the costs of infection intervention mount, Ms Brown said that some costs would be passed on to consumers.
In recent research, the FSA has suggested that sixty-six percent of raw chicken currently for sale is contaminated. Some of this may be due to the fact that even when some birds have been positively identified as carrying campylobacter, they can be sold alongside uncontaminated birds. The logic has been that when cooked properly, the contaminated birds are no longer a risk as the bacteria is killed with normal cooking temperatures.
Currently, there are three classifications of contamination per the FSA. Twenty-seven percent of chickens are in the highest classification. As a way to combat this, there is a target in place now to reduce the number to just 1 in 10 birds by the year 2015. By doing this, there is the hope that campylobacter poisoning cases will be reduced by 100,000 annually.
