Undercooked Poultry Unsafe
A type of bacteria that may sicken and sometimes kill people who eat undercooked chicken or turkey is becoming more common and is developing resistance to antibiotics, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Estimates put the number of cases of the disease caused by the germ campylobacter at 2 million to 8 million a year in the United States and deaths at 200 to 800, the Times said.
The illness usually lasts about a week and its symptoms include cramps, abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea and fever. It can be as severe as the disease caused by salmonella, another germ found in undercooked poultry, but causes fewer fatalities, according to Dr. Bert Bartleson of Washington state’s Health Department.
Recent research also suggests that campylobacter may lead to the severe and sometime fatal nerve damage caused by Guillain-Barre syndrome. About 20 percent to 40 percent of the 5,000 cases a year of Guillain-Barre syndrome follows a bout of campylobacter infection.
Researchers say the campylobacter germ infects 70 percent to 90 percent of all chickens. That’s a higher estimate than one six years ago by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had said 30 percent to 70 percent of chickens carried it.
The use of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones to treat the infection in chickens has created strains of drug-resistant campylobacter in humans.
“Since 1995, with the licensing of fluoroquinolones for use in chickens, levels of drug-resistant campylobacter in humans has gone up dramatically,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the Minnesota Health Department.
His department randomly sampled poultry in Minnesota supermarkets and found 70 percent of chickens were contaminated with the germ; of those, 20 percent had the drug-resistant strain. For turkeys, 58 percent were contaminated and 84 percent of those had the drug-resistant strain.
Scientists believe the public is more aware of salmonella than the more widespread campylobacter because the latter is hard to pronounce and spell, and there is no simple laboratory test to detect it. For both germs, the safety advice is the same: Cook poultry thoroughly, and carefully wash anything that has come into contact with raw poultry or its juices.