Supermarkets in the United Kingdom have reported their Campylobacter in chicken results for the first quarter of 2022.

The data covers January to March 2022 for nine retailers on high levels of Campylobacter in fresh, shop-bought, UK-produced chickens.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) maximum level is 7 percent of birds with more than 1,000 colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) of Campylobacter.

Results at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Morrisons went up while Lidl and Asda recorded lower levels of contamination compared to the previous quarter. Figures for Waitrose and Co-op stayed the same.

For Marks and Spencer, 4 percent were in the maximum category in January, 3 percent in February but 10 percent in March from 376 chickens sampled.

In October 2021, 5 percent of chickens were above 1,000 CFU/g, 8 percent in November 2021 and 5 percent in December 2021 from the same amount of poultry tested.

More positive findings
For Tesco, 3 percent of 302 samples were above 1,000 CFU/g in the first quarter of 2022 compared to 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Sainsbury’s Campylobacter results for the first quarter of 2022 showed that 5 percent of chickens had levels about 1,000 cfu/g compared to 3 percent in the past quarter.

Aldi revealed 4.2 percent of chickens sampled were in the above 1,000 CFU/g category compared to 3.3 percent in the previous quarter.

Morrisons had almost 6 percent of chickens at the top contaminated level from 101 birds tested compared to 4 percent of 123 samples in the final quarter of 2021.

Better or stable results

Lidl recorded 2 percent of birds in the highest category which is down from 6 percent in the previous quarter.

Asda informed that 1 percent tested positive for the highest level of contamination in the latest quarter compared to 2 percent in the previous three months.

Waitrose and Partners had 1 percent of chickens testing positive for Campylobacter at levels above 1,000 CFU/g for the second successive quarter.

Co-op results for the second quarter running showed no chickens were contaminated at levels greater than 1,000 CFU/g.

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