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Most raw chicken on grocery
store shelves is contaminated with at least some fecal bacteria. And most
of these bacteria -- many of which can make people sick -- showed resistance
to antibiotics commonly used to treat human illness.
The researchers wanted to gauge
the effectiveness of HACCP,
a system intended to reduce bacterial contamination that the US Department
of Agriculture mandated in chicken-processing plants beginning in 1998.
While the system does seem to be working, retail grocery stores that package
chicken are not regulated by HACCP and appear to be a place where contamination
often occurs.
Researchers bought chicken
parts including livers, thighs and wings from seven grocery stores in
two rural Alabama counties. They put the chicken parts into bacterial
culture medium to see what would grow.
Of the 253 samples they tested,
233 contained bacteria of a type capable of making people sick. Three
quarters of the bacteria were fecal, which are linked to unsanitary conditions.
The researchers also found bacteria indicating food spoilage in 5% of
the samples.
And 62 of the 67 samples they
checked, or 93%, were resistant to at least one antibiotic, while 87%
were resistant to two or more antibiotics. Resistance to a family of antibiotics
called cephalosporins, which are often given to people who are allergic
to penicillin, was common.
Even when resistant bacteria
are not capable of causing human disease, They can pass resistance along
to other bugs that can make people sick. The findings are likely generalizable
to the entire United States, the researchers state, because chicken feeding,
raising, processing and packaging is so uniform across the country.
The contamination most likely
occurs after retail grocery stores buy whole chickens in bulk and then
repackage them -- for example removing hundreds of chicken wings or thighs,
combining them in a vat and bagging them by the dozen for sale. At grocery
stores HACCP is out the window.
The responsibility for ensuring
that chicken is safe still lies with the consumer, because there is no
way to require producers to make a sterile product. The best approach,
he added, is to cook chicken until it falls off the bone to kill any bacteria.
Annual
Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology's Salt Lake City, May
21, 2002
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