Consumer Reports tested 382 store-bought chickens last spring and just recently published their findings this morning. Two-thirds of the broilers tested positive for salmonella and/or campylobacter!
The three top brands - Foster Farms, Perdue and Tyson along with 20 nonorganic store brands, nince organic store brands, and nine organic name brands. Five of the organic brands were labeled "air-chilled" (a slaughterhouse process in which carcasses are refrigerated and may be misted, rather than dunked in cold chlorinated water).
62 percent of the chickens were contaminated with Campylobacter while Salmonella was found in 14 percent and both in 9 percent. The good news is 34 percent of the birds were free of both pathogens (double the percentage found in Consumer Reports 2007 report). Unfortunately that is still far less than the 51 percent found in 2003's report.
* The most contaminated brands were the Tyson and Foster Farms as more than 80 percent tested positive for one or both pathogens.
* The cleanest overall were air-chilled broilers and the cleanest name-brand was Perdue's (56 percent were free of both).
* Although the store-brand organic chickens showed no signs of salmonella, 57 percent harbored campylobacter
* One of the scariest findings? "Among all brands and types of broilers tested, 68 percent of the salmonella and 60 percent of the campylobacter organisms we analyzed showed resistance to one or more antibiotics."
Yikes! Definitely an eye opener. To read the rest of the analysis please check out Consumer Reports.
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