Study Shows 50% Of All Tested Chicken Contained Harmful Antibiotic Resistant Chicken Diseases – Understand How To Protect Yourself
The average American eats 83 pounds of chicken yearly and disturbingly an a new study done by Consumer Reports showed that 50% of its randomly purchased chicken tested positive for harmful antibiotic resistant chicken diseases.
The same study stated that 97% of all chicken tested had chicken diseases that could make you sick. It is a little comforting that all of that chicken disease was not was not antibiotic resistant.
The antibiotic resistant chicken diseases included a strain of salmonella known as Heidelberg, which has caused nausea, vomiting, severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, and fever that has required hospitalization.
“Our tests showed that those resistant bacteria are commonly found in chicken at your local grocery store. We collected samples in July 2013, months before the Foster Farms salmonella outbreak drew a public-health alert from the Department of Agriculture (USDA). It turned out that we had purchased a package of the tainted chicken and that our tests found a strain of salmonella (known as Heidelberg).”
The study tested for 6 chicken diseases that included salmonella, campylobacter, and staphylococcus aureus which are some of the most common bacterial causes of food poisoning. It also tested for E. coli and enterococcus, which are typical measures of fecal contamination, and klebsiella pneumoniae, which is a bug that’s naturally present in our stomach but that can cause infections such as pneumonia.
Check here for a list of other common poultry diseases. You can find an exhaustive list of poultry diseases here.
316 chicken breasts were tested from major national grocery chains, big-box stores, and regional markets in 26 states. Of the 316 chicken breasts 252 of them were from conventionally produced chickens. 64 of the chicken breasts were from brands that use no antibiotics in raising chickens and of them 24 were from organically raised chicken. Highlights from the study revealed these chicken diseases:
- Every one of the four major brands we tested (Perdue, Pilgrim’s, Sanderson Farms, and Tyson) contained worrisome amounts of bacteria. See the list of brands tested
- More than half of the chicken breasts were tainted with fecal contaminants (enterococcus and E. coli)
- Enterococcus was the most common bacterium we found, occurring in 79.8 percent of our samples. Next was E. coli, in 65.2 percent of them; campylobacter, 43 percent; klebsiella pneumoniae, 13.6 percent; salmonella, 10.8 percent, and staphylococcus aureus, 9.2 percent.
- About half of our samples (49.7 percent) tested positive for at least one multidrug-resistant bacterium, and 11.5 percent carried two or more types of multidrug-resistant bacteria.
- Of the 65.2 percent of samples testing positive for E. coli, 17.5 percent of the bugs were “ExPEC” bacteria, a nasty type of E. coli that’s more likely than other types to make you sick with a urinary-tract infection.
Protect Yourself Against Chicken Diseases
I protect myself against meat diseases, which include chicken diseases, by not eating them as part of my plant based diet.
To protect against antibiotic resistant chicken diseases it is better to eat organic chicken. This will eliminate passing on the antibiotic resistant bugs, but it will not eliminate passing on the numerous diseases and bugs associated with chickens.
In the case of eating organic chicken at least if you did need to take antibiotics to fight against chicken diseases they would be more effective against them.
Since raw chicken contains so much bacteria you should use gloves when cleaning and handling it. It is also very important to cook chicken to an internal temperature of 165° F to maximize the chance of killing all the bacteria.
