Morrisons probes campylobacter data conflict

The FSA survey, between July and September, found that Morrisons was the retailer with the highest levels of campylobacter​ in fresh chickens, with 26% of samples shown to be heavily contaminated.

But the supermarket said its own test results for the whole of 2015 showed that on average only 4.8% of its chickens had high levels of contamination, well below the 7% industry target.

‘Own testing programme’​

“We have been working hard with our suppliers to reduce the incidence of campylobacter and recent results from our own testing programme have met the FSA target,” ​a Morrisons spokesman said.

“The FSA results are different from our own testing and we are working closely with them to understand why the difference has occurred.”​

In response to the discrepancy, a FSA spokesman said there were several reasons why data collected by industry and their own data may show differences.

‘Different sampling strategy’​

“For one, the sampling may have been performed in different months and through a different sampling strategy,” ​he said.

“A very important difference is represented by the different laboratories examining the chickens.​

“Laboratory methods and instruments vary among laboratories and culturing a very difficult bacterium, such as campylobacter, may explain some of the disparities in the data sets.”​

In May, the FSA congratulated Morrisons on its progress and verified test results showing a high contamination level of just 2.3% between January and April.

At the time FSA director of policy Steve Wearne said: “This is very welcome news from Morrisons and goes to show that campylobacter levels on chicken can be significantly reduced by targeted interventions across the production process.​”

Chicken is judged to be heavily contaminated if there are more than 1,000 colony forming units of campylobacter per gram (cfu/g).

This is the highest band of contamination, while two other bands correspond to less than 100 cfu/g and between 100 and 1,000 cfu/g.