One in five UK chickens are 'toxic'

27 February 2015 - 02:41 By ©The Daily Telegraph
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NO FAKING: It tastes like chicken and looks like chicken, because it is chicken
NO FAKING: It tastes like chicken and looks like chicken, because it is chicken
Image: Sunda Times

Every home-cooked chicken in the UK poses a food poisoning risk because supermarkets are acting too slowly to eradicate a dangerous bug, officials say.

Tests found 73% of chickens in supermarkets contained campylobacter, which makes 280000 people ill every year and can cause death.

Almost one in five birds was highly dangerous, figures published yesterday showed. In almost 7% of cases, the bacteria were present on the packaging of chickens.

And at no major British supermarket was the proportion of whole chickens contaminated below 68%.

The Office for National Statistics said that "all chickens, no matter which retail outlet they are sold from" were at risk of being contaminated.

It urged families to take particular care during handling and cooking whole chickens at home.

Mike Catchpole, chief scientist at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said the findings were a "concern".

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