Playing Chicken With Health
The discovery of a drug-resistant strain of the most common food bacterium is raising disturbing new questions about the safety of chicken in the American diet.
A Minnesota Health Department study showed that fluoroquinolones antibiotics used to treat disease in poultry are resulting in a strain of drug-resistant campylobacter bacteria in human consumers. The state agency has sent its findings to the Food and Drug Administration and is urging the FDA to review its 1995 decision to allow poultry producers to use the antibiotics on chickens and turkeys to keep them healthy.
Three weeks ago, the health department’s random sampling of chickens from Minnesota supermarkets showed 79% were contaminated with campylobacter, which can result in diarrhea in humans if the poultry is not cooked or handled properly before being eaten. Twenty percent of the contaminated birds had a strain of campylobacter that does not respond to antibiotics routinely used by humans to fend off this bacterial infection.
The Minnesota findings coincide with a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that new detection methods reveal 70% to 90% of all chickens are infected with campylobacter, compared to the 30% to 70% detected six years ago. The number of chickens receiving antibiotics is not known, but Americans, who eat an average of 49.5 pounds of chicken each year, should be concerned.
Despite new campylobacter detection methods, no simple, single test for the contaminant exists. So the new federal rules aimed at curbing disease-causing bacteria in poultry and beef do not have baseline measurements for use in testing. The FDA and the Agriculture Department approved irradiation of chicken as a bacteria-killing measure in the early 1990s, but few processors use the method.
The potential threat of a drug-resistant strain of campylobacter warrants an FDA review. Consumers, meanwhile, are on their own. There are no labeling requirements on the use of antibiotics in chicken. The industry and government are playing chicken with our health.
