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March 16, 2022 11:20 pm

Superbug-Infected Chicken Is Being Sold All Over the US

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent not-for-profit news organization based in London: Campylobacter is America's biggest cause of foodborne illness, just ahead of salmonella. Both are potentially fatal. Yet between 2015 and 2020, U.S. companies sold tens of thousands of meat products contaminated with campylobacter and salmonella, according to government sampling records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. More than half of these were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant strains, a rapidly escalating issue that can be exacerbated by poor hygiene conditions. The poultry companies supply major grocery stores and fast-food chains. Tyson has supplied chicken to McDonald's, Perdue has sold to Whole Foods, and both have supplied Walmart. Although the USDA deems a certain level of salmonella and campylobacter within poultry acceptable, 12 major U.S. poultry companies -- including poultry giants Perdue, Pilgrim's Pride, Tyson, Foster Farms, and Koch Foods -- have exceeded USDA standards for acceptable levels of salmonella multiple times since 2018, when the government began reporting contamination rates at individual plants, according to the department's records. The USDA still runs tests for campylobacter in processing plants but does not currently track whether plants exceed the contamination thresholds. Batches of poultry products with contamination rates above the limit don't have to be recalled, although plants that repeatedly exceed the thresholds can be temporarily shut down. Separate government records also show that between January 2015 and August 2019, the same 12 major U.S. poultry companies broke food safety rules on at least 145,000 occasions -- or on average more than 80 times a day. Poultry plant workers also claimed they have sometimes been asked to process rotten-smelling meat, have witnessed chicken tossed into grinders with dead insects, and found government safety inspectors apparently asleep on the job. Campylobacter causes more than 100 deaths every year in America as well as 1.5 million infections. It also accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome [...]. Yet the sale of poultry products found to be contaminated with either that or salmonella bacteria remains perfectly legal. The level of salmonella and campylobacter that the USDA deems acceptable differs depending on the product. A maximum of 15.4 percent of chicken parts leaving a processing plant, for instance, can test positive for salmonella and the plant can still meet acceptable standards. The threshold for campylobacter is 7.7 percent. Many experts argue these levels are too lax. The report also notes the concerning increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. "The number of drug-resistant salmonella infections in the U.S. rose from around 159,000 in 2004 to around 222,000 in 2016," reports Motherboard, citing the CDC. "Campylobacter has become more resistant too: Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat it, is increasingly ineffective." "The rise of superbugs is having increasingly serious human consequences. In order to treat these illnesses, doctors are turning more frequently to last-resort drugs, which often have more side effects. And if these fail, there's no choice but to let the disease take its course."

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