Levels of campylobacter ‘scandalous’, says Professor Tim Lang, after tests show up 1o 8 out of 10 chickens contaminated

A leading food expert and adviser to successive governments has called for a boycott of supermarket chicken because of “scandalous” levels of contamination after tests revealed that up to eight in 10 show traces of a potentially lethal bug.



Professor Tim Lang, who served as an expert adviser to the health and environment departments until 2011 and advised parliament on setting up the Food Standards Agency, said the levels of food poisoning bugs found in official tests on fresh retail chicken were shocking.

Eight out of 10 fresh chickens bought from UK supermarkets this summer were contaminated with the potentially lethal food-poisoning bug campylobacter, the food watchdog has said, warning that not one individual chain is meeting national targets over the issue.

Following six months of testing, an average of 70% of supermarket chickens proved positive for campylobacter on samples of skin. Within that, the Food Standards Agency said, the more recent three months of tests from May to July showed an 80% incidence. The bug tends to be more prevalent during the summer, but consumer groups expressed shock at the soaring levels.

Across the six-month period 18% of the nearly 2,000 chickens tested contained the highest levels of campylobacter, the levels seen as most likely to make people ill. 6% of packaging showed signs of the bug.

Asda was the worst-performing retailer, with 78% of its chickens taken to labs testing positive for campylobacter over the period, followed by Co-op (73%), and then Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, all on 69%, with Marks & Spencer showing an incidence of 67% and Tesco the best at 64%.

It is the first breakdown of the results between the various supermarket chains, the FSA said.

A collection of other retailers, taking in smaller discount chains such as Lidl, Aldi and Iceland, as well as individual retailers and butchers, had a total incidence of 76%. However, 25% of the chickens from these shops had the highest levels of contamination, the worst apart from Asda, where the figure was 28%.

Introducing the findings, Steve Wearne, director of policy for the FSA, said both retailers and the handful of giant poultry processors that serve them needed to act swiftly if they wanted to reach their official target of reducing the proportion of fresh chickens carrying the highest levels of campylobacter to 10% by the end of 2015. In the past week, the major retailers have been stepping up plans to introduce flash-freezing, steaming and new bagging methods to reduce the bug’s occurrence.

Shoppers could still protect themselves and their families by following advice on correctly handling, storing and cooking chickens, Wearne said. However, he stressed, this was not entirely up to them. “It’s not all about consumers,” he said. “The industry needs to take steps to raise their game, to make strides towards reducing the burden of illness that campylobacter cause – 280,000 cases each year in the UK. More needs to be done.

“We know that if the industry meets its target over the next year they will prevent tens of thousands of people each year getting ill from this really nasty bug, and will stop dozens of people each year dying from this bug and the complications it sometimes causes, and will save the UK hundreds of millions of pounds in avoiding lost productivity. We think, quite simply, that that’s a target worth aiming for.”

The target of no more than 10% of birds leaving processing plants with the highest levels of campylobacter was a good yardstick, Wearne said: “We want levels of campylobacter to be reduced across the board, but this focus on the most highly-contaminated birds – we know it’s those which are most likely to make people ill - allows us to judge the progress that’s being made.”

As yet, he noted, not one major retailer was currently meeting this level, with the best, Tesco, seeing a rate of 11% for the first six months of the planned year of testing.

Wearne said: “The results show that wherever you buy chicken from it might have campylobacter on it, and that no individual retailer, nor the industry as a whole, is yet meeting the targets we have agreed.”

Asked what processors and retailers were doing, Wearne said they depended on a range of factors. Among the “a la carte menu of interventions” included better bio-security and more changes of overalls and boots between sheds at farms, better processes for eviscerating birds at processing plants, and innovations in stores such as leak-proof packaging and roast-in-the-bag chickens, stopping consumers from having to handle the raw meat.

“It will require – it does require – material investment,” he said. “And we know from talking to the retailers and processors that it’s in the order of millions of pounds. But the public health gains are extremely significant.”

Writing on the Guardian’s website, Professor Lang says the FSA findings on dirty chicken are on a par with previous food scandals over salmonella in eggs and BSE in cattle.

“It is now clear that the food industry and poultry trade in particular have failed to get a grip of this totally unacceptable situation … essentially they have been continuing to trade while, and perhaps even by, selling contaminated food. The FSA has not been getting a grip of this poisonous mix either.” The public should “be outraged and withhold their money until they can have confidence in what they consume”, he added.

The consumer watchdog Which? was also scathing about the industry’s “scandalous” performance on campylobacter, saying “supermarket bosses should hang their heads in shame” over their results.



The Consumers Association, meanwhile, said much more needed to be done and supermarket bosses should “hang their head in shame”. “These results are a damning indictment of supermarkets and consumers will be rightly shocked at the failure of trusted household brands to stem the tide of increasingly high levels of campylobacter,” said Richard Lloyd from the organisation.

The largest poultry processor, 2 Sisters, which supplies chicken to several of the leading supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, the Co-op, M&S, and Aldi, called for a “proportionate” response. “Unnecessary overreaction around this issue [has] the potential to cause undue alarm for consumers and consequently damage the UK’s food and farming industries,” it said. It added that it had pledged £10m to reduce campylobacter and was working hard with retailers and farms on the problem.

All the supermarket groups said they were working to tackle the contamination with a variety of measures. An Asda spokesperson said: “We take campylobacter seriously and it goes without saying that we’re disappointed with these findings. There is no ‘silver bullet’ to tackle this issue, but along with other retailers, we’re working hard to find a solution.

“We have led the industry in packaging innovation and were the first supermarket to launch roast-in-the-bag chicken, removing the need to handle raw meat.” Asda is trialling a new procedure, SonoSteam, which, if successful, will be rolled out across its suppliers.

The British Retail Consortium said it would be working even harder to find solutions to help consumers such as leak-proof packaging for all raw chicken and new roast-in-the-bag products.

The consortium’s director of food and sustainability said: “There has been concern that implementing a solution to prevent campylobacter will mean the cost of chicken increases but we believe any increase should be small, and in our competitive market retailers will work with their suppliers to do everything they can to avoid passing this on to consumers.”

The British Poultry Council said: “The data released from six months of sampling shows that all producers and retailers have levels in the same range. This reinforces how universal and challenging the issue is and the complex nature of campylobacter.

“Poultry producers have looked at every part of their production chain to see where new ideas and technology can combat this very complex bacteria: improved biosecurity on farms, new methods in the slaughterhouse, and brand new technologies being developed such as SonoSteam, rapid surface chilling, and roast-in-the-bag packaging. We hope that a combination of these measures will, over time, reduce the level of campylobacter in chickens.”

Campylobacter Q&A

What is campylobacter?

Campylobacter is a nasty food-poisoning bug that thrives in the gut and faeces of all kinds of poultry and can cause infections in humans.

What’s the problem with chickens?

Up to 80% of cases of campylobacter food poisoning in humans may be attributable to contaminated raw chicken.

How serious is it?

Campylobacter makes around 280,000 people sick and causes approximately 100 deaths each year in the UK, although the figure for illness is probably much higher since most people do not report milder cases of food poisoning.

How much chicken is contaminated?

Eighty per cent of fresh whole chickens in supermarkets and butchers were contaminated in tests over the summer months from May to June. The average rate of contamination over six months, February to July, was 70%.

Is there any safe level of campylobacter?

No, any level can make you sick but the higher the rate of contamination, the more likely it is to make you sick. One-fifth of retail chicken tested fell into the heavily contaminated category.

Is it illegal to sell chicken contaminated with campylobacter?

No, the industry is required to remove from sale foods that test positive for salmonella, but are not restricted in selling campylobacter-contaminated food.

Is it safe to buy chicken?

The bug is killed by cooking but can easily be spread from raw chicken. The FSA advises consumers not to wash chicken before cooking as that can spread the bacteria around the kitchen, to double-wrap raw chicken to keep it separate from other food in the fridge, to throw away shopping bags that become contaminated with raw juice, to wash anything chicken comes in to contact with thoroughly, including hands, surfaces and utensils, and to cook chicken well. Freezing also kills the bug.

Are there safer places to buy chicken?

All major supermarkets have unacceptable levels of campylobacter contamination on their fresh chicken, ranging from around two-thirds of birds contaminated for the best performers, to four-fifths of their birds carrying campylobacter in the worst. No retailer is meeting the official target of having less than 10% of its chickens heavily contaminated. In the UK, 90% of fresh chickens come from the intensive farms and abattoirs of just five processing companies.

Is there much difference between retailers?

Asda tested as having 78% of chickens contaminated, with 28% heavily contaminated, and was above average, while Tesco chickens tested as 64% contaminated with 11% heavily contaminated and was below average. All the other major retailers had rates of contamination in between.

What might account for the difference?

The FSA says retailers drive standards in their specifications to suppliers so they will be key to improving the figures.

Is there any difference between top of the range and bargain special offer chickens or intensive and free range/organic?

No, and they often come from the same abattoirs anyway.