The Food Standards Agency has released the latest set of figures in its ongoing survey of campylobacter in whole chicken at retail.
The figures, covering the period between February and November 2014 show:
- 19% of chickens tested positive for campylobacter within the highest band of contamination
- 73% of chickens tested positive for the presence of campylobacter
- 7% of packaging tested positive for the presence of campylobacter. Only three out of more than 3,000 samples of packaging tested positive at the highest band of contamination
FSA is continuing to monitor the progress on introducing various interventions into the food chain aimed at reducing campylobacter. Significant interventions have begun to be trialled in slaughterhouses. These trials have continued to date and the second half of 2015 will see them moving into full scale production and their effectiveness translating into the survey figures.
Commenting on the results, Andrew Large, chief executive, British Poultry Council (BPC) said: “We welcome the news that retailers and their suppliers are making significant progress, and hope that proven technology will be made commercially available across the sector. The BPC remains committed to collaborative working between industry, retailers, and regulators, as we believe this is where long-term consistency will emerge. This joint effort is a complement to the creativity and investment we are seeing.
“We are pleased to see the FSA's commitment to solving this problem remains as strong as our own, and we look forward to being able to demonstrate good progress as we move through 2015.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
