02.12.2021
Campylobacter spp. are the most common bacterial cause of foodborne illness in the UK, with chicken considered to be the most important vehicle of transmission for this organism. The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) agreed with poultry industry to reduce Campylobacter spp. contamination in raw chicken and set a target to reduce the prevalence of the most contaminated chickens (those with more than 1000 colony forming units (cfu) per gram (g) chicken neck skin) to below 10% at the end of the slaughter process, initially by 2016. To help monitor progress, a series of UK wide surveys were undertaken to determine the levels of Campylobacter spp. on whole UK-produced, fresh chicken at retail sale in the UK. The FSA has recommended that the retail proxy target for the percentage of highly contaminated raw whole retail chickens should be less than 7% and while continued monitoring has demonstrated a sustained decline for chickens from major retailer stores, chicken on sale in other stores have yet to meet this target. The last report presents results from testing chickens from non-major retailer stores in a sixth survey year from 2019 to 2020 and summarises the data for both the fifth and sixth survey year together presenting data from 2018 to 2020. In line with previous practise, samples were collected from stores distributed throughout the UK.
In the sixth survey year, 1008 test results were determined from chicken skin samples collected from non-major retailer stores between August 2019 to October 2020. Campylobacter spp. were detected in 59.6% of these samples, and 12.8% of these had counts above 1000 cfu per g chicken skin. There was no significant difference in the percentage of highly contaminated samples with counts above 1000 cfu per g chicken skin between the fifth and sixth survey year and the average for both years was 11.8%. While the average percentage of highly contaminated samples from fresh, whole chicken at retail sale in UK stores of smaller chains, independents and butchers has decreased since the previous survey years (2014 to 2018) it is still higher than in samples from major retailers.
