Clamp down on Campylobacter

You hit the “nail on the head ” wavechange with proton pump inhibitors as when I was much younger I had a major stomach operation that is no longer performed in this country except under emergencies . I have been on acid reducers for may decades , but they were useless up until those PPI,s came out and I was put on them and one of the downsides was that it left you more liable to infection another long term problem was that they could cause stomach cancer . While that was “raging ” in medical circles I had to attend hospital to make sure I hadnt contracted it. While stomach acid can cause problems like heart burn or if you suffer from Zollinger Ellison syndrome , for which I was tested twice in my life it is better to have stomach acid than to have very little.

Proton pump inhibitors are very effective and have been handed out like sweeties. Anyone on long-term treatment should be taking the minimum possible dose and this should be monitored to minimise the cancer risk you mention, Duncan. According to friends in the medical profession, this isn’t happening. I wonder how many GPs appreciate the increased risk of food poisoning when they prescribe acid-suppressing drugs.

It is very difficult to establish why humans have become more susceptible to infection and allergies. Widespread use of antibiotics is likely to have had a major effect on bowel flora and there is no doubt that this has contributed to antibiotic resistance.

I should have acknowledged that campylobacter is an organism that is present in the environment and that chicken is not the only cause of human infections, but there is little doubt that poultry presents the greatest risk. The supermarkets have told us of the various ‘interventions’ that they are using to cut down campylobacter contamination of their chicken, but these have been introduced since the industry was shamed by the publication of campylobacter figures by the FSA.

wavechange -I dont find it at all difficult to work out why people are now more susceptible to infection and allergies and I am sure I said it before to a “hail ” of abuse – from “Angry ” of Croydon etc as I blamed the parents for “protectionism ” like MY ! little Jean/Johnny is not allowed out the house to play in the dirt and words to that effect . Apart from DNA where do you think children develop a resistance to infection ?? by getting childhood illnesses .We are organic human beings a small step up from animals but you dont see all those animals in jungles dying from disease ,why because they have built up a resistance to it –Naturally ,not synthetic injections . As a child I caught every known childhood disease because I got up to my knees in mud /water of streams / eating wild berries / etc etc and while organically I was unhealthy every time I cut myself I healed very quickly , no abscesses etc .

I would be very proud of Which? if it did advise people to avoid buying chicken, but doubt that this will happen.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the supermarkets made much of an attempt to address the growing problem of campylobacter food poisoning until there was talk about testing fresh chicken sold by retailers. I agree that improvements at each stage could achieve a great deal. Thankfully, most of the retailers use the same processing companies, so improvements will be shared.

It is not necessary to completely eliminate campylobacter to greatly reduce the risk of food poisoning. Our bodies are designed to cope with low level contamination by bacteria and the problem is when our defence systems are overwhelmed by large numbers of bacteria. Fortunately the focus has moved from the percentage of contaminated birds to the percentage of those that are highly contaminated, which is a more useful indicator of risk to health.

malcolm -waverchanges point about proton pump inhibitors is very striking and if you read my post you will see I was on them since they first came out , but stopped taking them for vision blurring etc . The point I am trying to make is the reason for feeding them to the chickens in the first place , what happens to any life form when it is confined in a non-natural environment ? Thats right those PPI are given for ONE reason only STRESS in the human body for instance stress causes a large increase in acid production especially among blood group O individuals especially stomach ulcers leading to stomach perforation , I personally have watched several people die from burst ulcers leading quickly to blood poisoning, so its a catch 22 situation .

“If worried then don’t buy chicken, but you can avoid a problem by cooking chicken correctly to destroy any campylobacter.”

As I have explained repeatedly, there is still the danger of cross contamination of cooked food and salads etc. with raw chicken juice laden with bacteria. A home cook may take appropriate measures but there is no guarantee that a restaurant will, and many cases of food poisoning are associated with eating out.

I could have gone on to say that if you are concerned about restaurant or takeaway hygiene then avoid chicken, but assumed that was taken for granted. Kitchen hygiene is important, not just for chicken but for other meats. I also understand frozen chicken is pretty well free from campylobacter. The FSA website has a lot of information including advice on how to handle chicken.

Campylobacter is present in many countries who are also grappling with the problem. If an acceptable magic solution was that easy then I presume it would be taken up by all producers. There is not – to my knowledge, but someone may know otherwise .

The inference in some of this Convo is that somehow the UK producers and retailers are resisting or avoiding remedies and writing a letter to them will put all that right. We need solutions, so if anyone has ideas as to how to deal with it better than the FSA can it would be useful to publish them. Universities have been contracted to carry out research projects; as far as I am aware they have not come up with remedies yet either.

Even if you avoid chicken when eating out you are still at risk because meat juices can contaminate cooked food and food such as salads that do not require cooking. Food hygiene inspections frequently identify risk of cross contamination in commercial premises. I have explained this before.

Since the first FSA survey of retailers there has been some reduction in campylobacter contamination, offering evidence that progress can be made. The pressure needs to be kept up and the decision to let the companies handle their own testing is a considerable setback in my view. The poor handling of addressing the problem of tumble dryer fires and the VW Group emissions problems clearly demonstrate the need for external intervention rather than leaving companies to sort out problems of their own creation.

I agree with you absolutely malcolm_r. It is a shame that the FSA side had to provided by a subscriber.

As is traditional in these campylobactor Conversations I would point out that the ratio of meals with chicken eaten is yet again not covered other than the incidence in big figures “hundreds of thousands”.
– It is by far the commonest eaten meat in the UK and if you eat it as much as I do over 100 times a year and say 50 million eat at that rate that is 5,000,000,000. [Say one incidence in 1700 meals?]
– there are many potential dangers in life BUT we cannot EVER guarantee complete safety
– the more rigorous the guarding against any potential problem you pay increasingly higher costs
– the incidence of campylobactor in household pets would seem a worthwhile survey to establish if in fact overly close contact by some owners is actually a common cause or not.
– the number of repeat sufferers would be interesting to see if there was a learning case

As you can understand statistics are a powerful tool to draw out potentially interesting facts. Given the weekly medical statistics [NOIDS] perhaps Which? could sponsor a researcher .

From the FSA:
“the FSA is encouraged by the recent significant improvements in Campylobacter levels”

“With the amount of work and commitment being done by industry and government to reduce the levels of campylobacter in chickens, and the recent encouraging sampling results, we would expect the target to be met in the near future. Particularly the retail survey results, demonstrate already the real progress being made by the industry”

“There is a growing list of interventions that have been developed and then implemented at scale, in different combinations, by different supply chains from farm to retail. These are having a demonstrable impact on the levels of contamination we are finding in the retail survey.”

“Additionally, in the longer-term, we will be asking industry to conduct their own testing and to publish their results to an agreed set of standards prescribed and maintained by us.” The FSA are seemingly a very competent organisation and I am sure will deal with this properly. The very large increase in the amount of data that results can only speed up the knowledge required to improve the production of safer chicken.

So progress is apparently more significant than a mere “some”. Let’s not continually downplay what is being done simply to make more of this problem. Generating the “scare stories” that have been produced in the past does not help the situation. Putting forward constructive proposals and doing some hard work to improve matters will.

Tumble driers and VW have no relevance to chickens.

The FSA, unusually, are very open about there meetings which are open to the public. The Agenda for the July meeting is available.
food.gov.uk/about-us/our-board/meetings/2016/010116/board-meeting-agenda-13-july-2016

It is very interesting to see what they are going to be checking for this coming year …. including plastic rice!
food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/food-sampling-guidance-2016-17.pdf

For the benefit of those new to this discussion, have a look at the video posted on this page: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/27/dirty-chicken-scandal-campylobacter-eight-out-10-uk-birds-supermarkets-asda Hopefully this is highly untypical but it gives an insight into what could happen on a bad day. In intensive chicken processing, even uncontaminated carcasses can become contaminated with faeces from the bowels of contaminated birds.

The fact that some reduction in campylobacter contamination has been achieved since the introduction of testing does show that there is scope for more effort. A friend of mine nearly died as a result of asphyxiation caused by paralysis and after nearly a year is still suffering the consequences of a campylobacter infection. If economics is the only consideration, then it must have cost a considerable amount of money to keep her in hospital for months.

I obviously cannot say what can be achieved by good management throughout the industry can achieve. The solution may be vaccination of chicken so that they do not become carriers of campylobacter, and rapid methods of testing individual birds before they are sent to the abattoir. I wonder if the poultry industry is funding either of these approaches.

To avoid sensationalising this topic I suggest people also read the reports on the FSA website about the real progress that is being made (summarised by them as :
“the FSA is encouraged by the recent significant improvements in Campylobacter levels””.

You can see what interventions are proposed, what research is being done, and rather than react to scare stories, judge from this how best to view the problem and come to your own conclusions.

food.gov.uk/news-updates/news/2016/15076/update-on-fsa-campylobacter-retail-survey

duncan, maybe this comment was meant for someone else? I have not been involved in a discussion on proton pump inhibitors. 🙂

If it is used to convert people into Which? members, contributing to support testing and investigations, then I see no problem. I’d never looked at i News until now – have many others? It seems you subscribe £4.99 a month to access it. Just how much are Which? departing from a Members organisation and charity, supported mostly by their annual subscriptions?

malcolm ,even in my short time here I knew that was coming ,its called globalisation . The only way to expand is to obtain various paths that increase advertising aspect of Which worldwide and its doing it . Remember I said Which is getting commented on in the US and elsewhere and is high in web ratings internationally in various aspects of it ? It is the only way forward for a Western progressive company and Which is becoming global , when that happens many parties (BB) start taking an interest to make use of its good name , that is only natural in capitalism , many companies do the same and become bigger and bigger Which really is a “brand name ” that to many is something to be connected to . Whether everybody finds it morally acceptable is another thing but its progress in this society.

As Duncan says, Which? is a brand name, and a well known and respected one. We do not know how widely Alex Neill’s letter was publicised but is not the basis of a press release. Perhaps it should have been.

duncan, as I said I hope it increases Which? membership. I just hope Which? continues to focus on its original – as I understand it – role of independent expert investigations, helping consumers make better choices, fighting their corner and both protecting and supporting their rights – “their” being all of us, as we are all consumers.

I just wonder whether a members’ organisation – 1 million of us provide £100 million a year to fund it – can also be a “universal” consumer watchdog, or whether this should be a separate organisation – a charity perhaps – supported by donations, a tax payer funded watchdog or whatever. I would not like Which? to be diverted from its key role by taking on too much that it can’t handle effectively. That key role is of great value to those who pay for it.

We have a European umbrella – BEUC – that covers all consumer groups and maybe we should look to them to them for more powerful campaigning.

I have another concern, that Which? combines a charity and a business where the lines may become blurred, and with criticisms of the extraordinarily high remunerations involved. There is perhaps a possible danger of commercialism influencing policy.

You also say going global is the way forward for a “western progressive company”.
One might also view it in the light of a subscriber based testing organisation losing touch with its paying membership and moving to become a media animal with an angle on consumer matters.

Duncan – You refer to Which? being much quoted in the US which I find surprising, very surprising.

Given the existence of Consumer Reports in the US which is a much more thorough testing body [Xhose excepted and no doubt some others] , like
consumerreports.org/cro/health/prescription-drugs/best-buy-drugs/index.htm
the weekly Consumerist magazine,
consumerist.com/
consumerhealthchoices.org/
consumersunion.org/
consumeraffairs.com/
safepatientproject.org/

What I meant diesel is that America being a large country and a global BB has a population that is a bit insular in respect that they focus on American issues . Americans have always had “local folks ” point of view and look on anybody not American as foreigners which are not usually held in high regard . So it was surprising to me to visit US websites and see Which cropping up more and more in posters comments over a period of years where under normal circumstances most things outside the US are ignored (well apart from the radical US websites I visit ) . Allied to that every time I come across positions of websites in world terms Which seems to keep going up the rankings . Then when I visit US BB websites I find more and more have a comment on Which –which is positive and feel it is doing good and “going the right way ” which knowing US BB , if Which had shares on the stock-market then they would be a good buy . I cannot find any US company commenting negatively on Which only they would like to be part of it and that in US terms is high praise indeed . Personally I think Which is “sitting on a gold mine ” as it stands at this juncture. Whether the members agree is another story I am only commenting on the business aspect.

Hello Lauren. We eat chicken at least once a week and have done for as long as I can remember. We’ve always handled and cooked it properly with, as far as I know, no ill effects. As it happens yesterday we had steak pie. But I would have had no second thoughts, other than buying from a reputable outlet – M&S is our local and hence regular food shop.

We don’t want to scare people into avoiding chicken do we? Just inform them of the way to handle and cook it safely which should be found on the packaging. The same as not letting raw meat juices of other types get onto other fresh or cooked foods.

I wonder whether our schools educate kids in the basics?

The FSA are not “passing on the responsibility of campylobacter testing to retailers” as far as I am aware. They are going to add the existing retailers’ testing results to their own, but under a common protocol so all the results are obtained in identical ways. I asked them about the possibility of doing this last year and they indicated then they were considering how best to do it.

The VW emissions problem and other examples of cheating demonstrates the need for independence from the companies. As I have said many times, products tested for Which? are purchased from retailers, just as you or I would do. Involving the manufacturers or retailers could allow selection of individual products for testing. Their independent testing has rightly been pushed as a major benefit of Which? testing.

I don’t believe that nearly enough is being done, Malcolm. I would like to see the industry funding research institutions to develop interventions that can be shared by all. Fortunately there is some sharing of expertise because various supermarkets and other companies use the same processors.

We don’t need to eliminate campylobacter because our natural defences can usually take care of low levels of campylobacter (and most bugs, though there are some exceptions) but it is essential to tackle higher level contamination.

What you see as progress, I see as failure to take the measures needed to adequately tackle a serious health problem.

In an earlier Conversation I mentioned that it had been discovered that providing chickens with clean water rather than water contaminated with faeces was successful in reducing campylobacter contamination. Some interventions are undoubtedly more complicated.

If you look at the FSA’s website (as I’m sure you do) it will be seen that much work has been done on different kinds of “intervention” – ways that campylobacter contamination and reduction might be tackled. Some of these are unsuccessful, others more so, and these were trialled to see what benefits they gave in production. We seem now to have entered the phase of putting these into production practice and hopefully the trial results wi be repeated. We will no doubt see over the next 12 months that covers all seasons of the year.

We are seeing significant improvements. That is good progress if it is sustained.

There are methods of campylobacter reduction – freezing chicken, soaking in chemicals, irradiation for example – that some find unacceptable.

What must be remembered is that campylobacter is destroyed by simply cooking chicken properly.

I’m interested in the subject and do follow developments.

Let’s compare this with a subject that we are agreed on. We are fed-up that retailers usually say that nothing can be done or refer customers to the manufacturer if a product fails soon after the guarantee has expired. They should instead be discussing the possibility that the customer might have a valid claim under the Consumer Rights Act. If I learned that retailers were now handling a third of cases correctly, I would not be happy that good progress is being made. I would want to push harder for action.

Cooking chicken properly will indeed destroy campylobacter but bringing heavily contaminated raw meat into the home presents risk of cross contamination of cooked food and food such as salads that is eaten raw. As we get older, we may not take as much care as we did before mental degeneration had set in.

Please explain what your proposals are to reduce campylobacter more quickly. It could be worth you suggesting them to the FSA; when I have contacted them in the past they have been most helpful and forthcoming. Please keep us informed.

It is important that we understand food hygiene – it embraces much more than this one topic and is essential to our health. Cooking pork properly was once regarded as essential – I don’t know whether it still is. And whilst we can all enjoy rare beef, there is danger in undercooking mince – so beware of the fad for rare beefburgers.

My suggestion is that realistic targets are set for maximum contamination levels for poultry to be sold for human consumption, much in the same way that we have maximum allowable emissions for new cars. Monitoring should be done independently.

Having had contact with the Food Standards Agency on a number of occasions, I agree they are helpful and the information they make available is exemplary. However, the FSA has limited resources and independent monitoring of supermarkets has been cut back, for example.

Mincing meat spreads bacteria on the surface throughout the meat. That is why preservatives are added to sausages and many beefburgers. Tapeworm infection used to be the reason why we were told to cook pork properly. It must be an unpleasant condition to discover but it’s easily treated.

Targets are a normal part of such matters but they must be based on what is realistic. The main objective should be to get as large a reduction as possible, irrespective of targets.

Supermarkets have been given the testing regimes by FSA to do testing of their own products at independent laboratories. The retailers generally test much larger samples than the FSA and can get more precise results. If you doubt the integrity of supermarket’s own testing you could ask FSA for a comment. When I spoke to FSA some time ago, having standardised the testing regime (neck skin removal was introduced for example) they were intending to include the supermarkets results to get a better overall view of progress.

I have already said that targets must be realistic. In the same way that car emissions limits have been revised downwards, the same could be done with campylobacter targets. I have been aware of the risks of campylobacter since about the time I started working in the field of microbiology. Maybe we could have dealt with the problem long before now if it had not been allowed to become so bad that the FSA started warning us of the danger of washing chicken.

Why don’t you study the reasons for doing proper independent testing rather than leaving the retailers to organise it? Please don’t suggest that Which? lets manufacturers do their own product testing according to protocols laid down by Which? 🙂

Which>, of course, no longer do testing, They subcontract it to commercial laboratories. Commercial laboratories also do independent testing for many others, including Campylobacter for industry. The FSA have set the test regime so laboratories conduct the tests and analyse the results in the same way when results need to be compared like for like. The FSA do not have their own laboratories. they publish a list of official feed and food control laboratories in the UK. In the UK, official feed and food laboratories include Public and Agricultural Analyst Laboratories and other microbiological laboratories that undertake work for local authorities (Food Examiners).

Such testing is showing significant improvements in the contamination of chicken due to the commitment of all concerned.

In my view it would be better for the companies to pay for the work to be done and centrally coordinated so we can be assured that there is no possibility of cheating and that the testing has been done under comparable conditions.

There are some peculiarities that deserve comment. For example Marks & Spencer returned the best figures this time round but several months ago they were the worst.

I am aware that Which? don’t run their own testing labs and I understand the reasons.

The concept that all companies set out to cheat and mislead is quite erroneous. Companies research and test to make better products – that is my experience of a number of manufacturing industries that I worked in. There products are very often certified by independent authorities and regularly audited. Many companies use independent laboratories, even if they have their own in-house expertise and test facilities which are essential for innovation and quality control. We regularly used BSI Laboratories, like many others.

Who is saying that ‘all companies set out to cheat’? I don’t want to continue this discussion, Malcolm. 🙁