British Supermarket Chicken Is Still Contaminated

As if the nonsensical food waste and unfair payment of producers weren't enough, Britain's supermarkets seem to have found another way to make themselves less appealing.

According to a survey released today by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), 73 percent of fresh, shop-bought chickens tested positive for campylobacter, bacteria that causes 280,000 people to fall ill each year in the UK.

Beginning in February 2014, the FSA's 12-month survey tested around 4000 samples of whole, raw chicken bought in UK supermarkets, independent shops, and butchers. As well as finding that nearly three quarters of chickens were contaminated with campylobacter, 7 percent of chicken packaging also tested positive for presence of the bug—a worrying stat for vegetarians sharing fridge space with omnivorous housemates.

The FSA will be carrying out further testing this summer but says that their current findings show that no retailers have "met the target for reducing campylobacter." ASDA fared the worst, being exposed as the only major supermarket with an above average incidence of chicken contaminated by campylobacter at the "highest level."

While this all sounds like an unequivocally bad start to barbecue season, the FSA did welcome the campylobacter reduction plans put in place by Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, the Co-op, and Waitrose. Since the end of the testing, ASDA has also revealed a "Campylobacter Combat Plan" that includes new production and packaging methods.

Steve Wearne, FSA Director of Policy said that he expected "all retailers and processors to be achieving the reductions we have seen in these retailers' figures" and that it would be "the only way we will meet the target we all signed up to."

The survey follows a similar "name and shame" study released by the FSA in November last year, which found that the majority of supermarket-bought chickens tested positive for contamination from campylobacter. As the Guardian notes, the study was published after much protest from the chicken-processing sector, who argued that it could damage the UK's food and farming industries.

Now that the FSA's survey results are out there for the world to digest (or not), it falls to the chicken-processing world to assure buyers that their roast dinner won't leave them chained to the toilet bowl. Consumer group Which? has already branded the findings as "beggars belief."

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When approached by MUNCHIES for comment on the report, the British Poultry Council stated that producers and retailers are "working bilaterally to trial options including enhanced biosecurity, management of thinning, improved processing, temperature treatments, and novel packaging."

Of course, campylobacter can be killed through correct cooking methods, but the thought of a potentially deadly bug lurking in the meat aisle is still a worrying thought for anyone who was counting on a summer of deliciously mindless chicken wing chomping.