Study: Farmed Meat Main Source of Campylobacteriosis

A new study has found that nearly all of the campylobacteriosis cases in the patients evaluated were caused by bacteria in animals farmed for meat, in particular chicken and cattle.

Researchers from the U.S. and the UK sequenced the DNA of bacteria collected from 1,231 patients in Lancashire, England and compared it to Campylobacter jejuin DNA sequences collected from wild and domestic animals and the environment.

Camplylobacter jejuni causes more cases of gastroenteritis in the developed world than any other bacterial pathogen, including E. coli, Salmonella, Clostridium and Listeria combined, claims the study.

According to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Camplylobacter is the most frequently reported animal infection transmissible to humans, with over 175,000 sufferers in the EU in 2006 (46 cases for every 100,000 people).

Wild and domestic animals act as natural reservoirs for the disease, claims the study, and it can also survive in water and soil, but the researchers said that recent studies had contradicted the idea that livestock are the main reservoir for human disease.

Source: FoodProductionDaily.com