Skip navigation

Food Standards Agency

Sunday 5 July 2009

Safer food better business banner

AZ-Directory What's New

Agency consults on campylobacter baseline target

Thursday 11 August 2005

campylobacter

The Agency is working with the food industry to halve the number of UK-produced chickens that test positive for campylobacter by 2010. To achieve this it needs to establish a baseline to monitor the progress towards this target and has launched a formal 12-week consultation to help set this baseline.

The proposal sets out a number of options for establishing the baseline. The Agency's 2001 survey of campylobacter in chickens, current rolling local authority surveillance, new surveillance, data from the industry, Agency research and monitoring in slaughterhouses are all considered.

There are limitations with each of the options and there is no single data set that gives an absolute measure of the baseline for the target.

But the Agency�s 2001 survey indicates the baseline falls within the range of 42-76% and, when considered with evidence from other sources, indicates the level of contamination is at least 70% at present.

It is therefore suggested that a baseline of 70% in the retail product would represent a challenging starting point for establishing the 2010 target.

Back to top

Related links

Reducing campylobacter in UK-produced chickens Reducing campylobacter in UK-produced chickens (Northern Ireland)

More advice from our eatwell website

(External) Food bugs

Tell a Friend

Printer friendly

Contact us

Get alerts

Our Sites

Find out what our other sites have to offer

Change Text Only Settings

Graphic version of this page