E Coli in 45% of US Retail Chicken Products

[kiny]

I am moving to africa.


http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/fecal-contamination-in-retail-chicken-products

A Report from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
April 2012

Fecal contamination is surprisingly common on chicken products in grocery stores. In this study, scientists with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine tested chicken products sold by 15 grocery store chains in 10 U.S. cities for the presence of feces. A certified, independent analytical testing laboratory in Chicago, Ill., tested for the presence of E. coli as evidence of fecal contamination. Chicken products from every city and every grocery store chain tested positive for fecal contamination. Overall, 48 percent of chicken samples tested positive.

Conclusion

Overall, roughly half of the chicken samples purchased in supermarkets were contaminated with feces, which originate in chickens’ intestines, but are easily spread during rearing, transport, slaughter, and processing. In turn, feces carried on chicken products into the home are easily transferred to countertops, cutting boards, utensils, refrigerators, and family members.

While consumers are counseled by the USDA to apply high cooking heat to poultry products, this treatment simply cooks the feces along with the muscle tissue and does nothing to remove it from the ingested product.

In summary, feces are present on approximately half of chicken products at retail stores in locations across the United States.

 

[David]

For anyone who has ever killed and butchered a chicken, this isn't surprising in the least.

Bacteria is everywhere, especially e.coli. What they don't say is the STRAINS of e.coli that they found. Some serotypes can cause food poisoning but heck, others are commensal in humans and some even help create vitamin K2.

There's plenty of reasons I try my best to avoid factory farmed chicken, but this isn't one of them.

 

[kiny]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/chicken-e-coli_n_1420393.html

 

[Mark in Seattle]

This is interesting to be sure. But I wonder how this would compare to say, somebody who simply raises their own chickens for their own consumption, as people have done for a long time and as people do in developing nations more than in developed nations. How much bacteria/feces, etc. results from a typical farmer butchering a chicken for dinner? Or how do the small "organic/free range" outfits rate in comparison? I'm not sure this report proves there's really anything harmful occurring in terms of passing on dangerous food to consumers, but who knows. Maybe the little bit is good to stimulate our immune system to though, could that be possible?

 

[ellie]

Interesting observations - when I was a child (Australia, 1960's)chicken was a rare luxury. Christmas, and maybe once or twice a year when a "chook" was getting old and not laying (eggs, that is!)
Now it's cheap, easily accessible, and a family meal 2-3 times a week. Another contributor to the Chron's aetiology/increasing frequency jigsaw?


HD