"campylobacter" news and stories

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is stepping up its standards for young chicken (broilers) and turkey inspections to reduce contamination by Salmonella and Campylobacte, CNN.com reported.

This marks the first revisions to the Salmonella standards for chicken since 1996 and the first-ever standards for Campylobacter, a corkscrew-shaped bacteria that can cause diarrhea, pain, fever and abdominal cramping. The new guidelines set standards for poultry slaughter facilities to prevent contamination and offer best-practices to keep live birds bacteria-free.

The USDA estimates that the new Salmonella standards will result in 26,000 fewer illnesses from contamination during the first two years of their implementation. The new Campylobacter standards should help avoid 39,000 illnesses.

"There is no more important mission at USDA than ensuring the safety of our food, and we are working every day as part of the President's Food Safety Working Group to lower the danger of foodborne illness," Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a statement.

"The new standards announced today mark an important step in our efforts to protect consumers by further reducing the incidence of Salmonella and opening a new front in the fight against Campylobacter."

Moves are afoot to ban the sale of chicken, except in its frozen form, in New Zealand.

The call comes after a report showed that New Zealand had the "dubious distinction of being the campylobacter centre of the world" A Food Safety Authority (FSA) report showed that all fresh chicken carcasses carried the campylobacter bug. It also detailed that New Zealand has more than three times the rate of notified campylobacteriosis as neighbour Australia. The rate of 370 cases per 100,000 people has been rising at about 12 per cent a year over the past five years. Over the last 9 years it is beleived that 11 people have died from the disease that causes diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach ache for up to a week.

[Chicken Little image from Disney]

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