Chicken meat is an extremely popular and affordable source of animal protein, and each Australian now consumes approximately 43 kilograms of it every year. But chicken is also uniquely prone to making people ill, due to contamination with bacteria.
Most people would know chicken meat can cause Salmonella infections, but there is a lesser known yet more common bacteria that also loves chicken meat and can make you ill.
Campylobacter actually causes very similar clinical illness to Salmonella, but is less likely to cause outbreaks (defined as two or more people infected after eating a common food or meal) so gets less publicity than the outbreak-prone Salmonella.
Making You Ill
Campylobacter recently caused a stir in the United Kingdom, after a survey found eight out of ten portions of poultry meat sold in supermarkets there were contaminated. The situation in Australia is likely to be similar although limited recent data have been published.
Campylobacter is, in fact, one of the leading causes of gastroenteritis from food around the world. Infection with this bacteria results in diarrhoea, abdominal cramping, and fever lasting up to a week. And while it’s rarely fatal, it can also result in chronic illnesses, such as reactive arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, and Guillain–Barré syndrome.
