Update: supermarkets must step up to the plate

I think anyone concerned about chicken should avoid eating it in restaurants and takeaways. I cannot foresee a time in the near future when it will be totally abolished, by its very nature, unless perhaps we adopt e.g. frozen, irradiated or chemically treated chicken only.

It’s not just a case of avoiding chicken, Malcolm. Cross contamination of cooked foods and foods that are eaten raw (e.g. salads) with juice from raw chicken presents a risk. Elderly people can be less careful and we have no control of how food is treated when we eat out.

Campylobacter is the main cause of food poisoning. According to the Food Standards Agency: “Campylobacter is considered to be responsible for more than 280,000 cases of food poisoning each year. There are more than 72,000 laboratory confirmed cases of campylobacter poisoning (also known as campylobacteriosis) and a high proportion of these will be due to food.” I do hope that the efforts in the past couple of years will mean a reduction in these figures. Bear in mind there will be many mild cases of food poisoning that go unreported.

Chemical treatment is usually chlorine bleach or peroxyacetic acid. Chemical treatment is effective and used in the US but is not allowed in the EU at present. Chicken can legally be irradiated. I would prefer to see more pressure on the industry to continue to make improvements rather than go down the road of using chemicals or irradiation.

I do understand the cross contamination issue and I, too, would not like to only be presented with artificially-treated chicken. I was simply pointing out what I think are the problems involved in getting campylobacter-free chicken.

I do not know whether pressure is lacking on the major producers or a lack of proven effective “interventions” in what is acknowledged as a difficult problem to combat. I mentioned “trials” because that is what a range of interventions were being put through to see which worked best. Until we have an effective armoury we will be unable to tackle the problem totally – my reading of the situation. If any major producers / retailers are avoiding necessary precautions maybe someone will tell us.

Campylobacter is far more likely to cause a problem if present in large numbers. I have explained the concept of ‘infective dose’ in other Conversations. Eliminating campylobacter is unlikely but achieving a substantial reduction should be sufficient to greatly reduce the risk of food poisoning. It’s best to focus on the number of highly contaminated samples rather than the larger number where lower level contamination is found.

My understanding is that campylobacter is mainly present on the surface of the meat, as a result of faecal contamination. I believe that better standards in growing and processing are still needed.

We have been told that neck skin is now removed during processing, which is an improvement but it means that test results are not directly comparable with the earlier tests.

The FSA said last year that they had changed their test method, and so current results would not be directly comparable with previous ones. For the Jan-Mar ’16 results the FSA said:
“One of the reasons the survey results are lower this quarter is because of the decision taken by a number of retailers and their suppliers to remove neck skin from the bird before it goes on sale. The neck skin is the most contaminated part of the chicken. However, it is also the part of the bird that we have been testing in our survey and this means that comparisons with previous results are not as reliable as we would like.”

That’s it, Malcolm. It makes sense to remove material that is likely to be heavily contaminated and no-one is going to eat.