_65912134_fsaThe United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) today published the latest set of results from its year-long survey of Campylobacter on fresh chickens at retail.

The results to date show:

  • 19% of chickens tested positive for Campylobacter within the highest band of contamination.
  • 73% of chickens tested positive for the presence of Campylobacter.
  • 7% of packaging tested positive for the presence of Campylobacter.

More than 3,000 samples of fresh whole chilled chickens and packaging have now been tested. The FSA’s 12-month survey, running from February 2014 to February 2015, will test around 4,000 samples of whole chickens bought from UK retail outlets and smaller independent stores and butchers. The full set of results is expected to be published in May.

Wouldn’t be interesting if our government did the same?