Three-fourths of UK chicken sampled contains campylobacter

The British Food Standards Agency sampled 3,274 chickens in major supermarkets and small butchers, and found that for British-orgin birds, 76.1 percent of them had the potentially lethal food-poisoning bug campylobacter.

The contamination level of birds from major supermarkets was greater than for small butchers. Critics of modern farming methods claim the rise of these superbugs is due to the use of drugs on factory farms to keep down sickness and infection.

Full story: Daily Mail

Organic poultry is not immune from bacterial content, but there is still a significant difference in terms of health risk. In relation to food-poisoning bacteria, such as campylobacter on meat, numerous studies have found that resistance to the two most important antibiotics for treating serious cases of infection in humans is very low in chickens coming from most organic farms, whereas it is high – and still increasing – in intensively reared chicken.

Full story: Organic Farming magazine