What seems to help the food pathogen is organic matter exuding from chicken carcasses. The food poisoning bacteria are found inside the guts of chickens. While effective cooking will kill the bacteria, people can sometimes forget to clean up the liquid that develops as a frozen chicken defrosts. These meat rich juices provide the bacteria with an ideal environment in which to grow and survive. This is the finding of a study carried out by the U.S. based Institute of Food Research.
The research is centered on ways to reduce incidents of
campylobacteriosis. This is a gastrointestinal infection caused by
Campylobacter. The illness is characterized by inflammatory, sometimes bloody, diarrhea or dysentery syndrome, mostly including cramps, fever and pain.
For the study, scientists collected the liquids produced from defrosting chickens. From these, they discovered that these liquids helped
Campylobacter attach to surfaces and to form biofilms. Biofilms are protein based “slime like” structures that can bacteria from the environment. Biofilms need to be removed through thorough cleaning and vigorous wiping. The biofilm not only protects the bacteria, it also provides them with an additional source of nutrients.
The new finding re-emphasizes the need to effectively cleaning surfaces in food preparation. Furthermore, understanding how
Campylobacter persists in the food production process could help efforts to reduce the high percentage of chickens that reach consumers contaminated with the bacteria
The new findings have been
published in the journal
Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The paper is titled “Chicken Juice Enhances Surface Attachment and Biofilm Formation of
Campylobacter jejuni”
In related news, Dr Frieda Jorgensen, a microbiologist at Public Health England told
The Guardian that an industry practice known as thinning, where farmers slaughter part of a flock to meet a retailers demand for smaller chickens before later slaughtering the rest, is a particular problem for causing
Campylobacter infections. Furthermore, in August, the
U.K. Food Standards Agency have issued a survey of
Campylobacter found on fresh shop-bought chickens. Over half of the chickens sampled were found to be infected.
