Abstract
Human campylobacteriosis is the most prevalent zoonosis, with chicken meat contributing substantially to the number of cases. Measures to avoid or at least reduce exposure by meat contaminated with Campylobacter (C.) spp. are needed. With regard to the process hygiene criterion introduced in 2018 for Campylobacter spp. on broiler carcasses, we evaluated the performance of a recently developed quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) for C. jejuni/coli on random caecal samples and chicken meat. With the qPCR on pooled caecal samples not only C. jejuni/coli positive (69.6%) versus negative broiler herds (30.4%) were identified, but herds highly colonized with C. jejuni/coli (39.4%) could also be identified. From the chicken meat samples, 8.0% were positive for C. jejuni/coli by qPCR and 0.7% by enumeration (>10 cfu/g) compared to 58.3% using cultural enrichment. Given the higher sensitivity, the qPCR method could replace the currently used enumeration method to assess the process hygiene criterion for Campylobacter spp. on broiler carcasses. Moreover, with the qPCR, a reliable identification of C. jejuni/coli colonized incoming broiler herds a few days before slaughter is feasible, which provides important information to optimize slaughter processes. Finally, identifying and monitoring herds with high C. jejuni/coli colonization rates could help to individually improve biosecurity measures at farm level, eventually reducing the C. jejuni/coli load on chicken meat.
Highlights
For more than 15 years, human campylobacteriosis has been a major food-borne disease in Europe with more than 240,000 reported cases per year [1]
Between April 2016 and March 2017, a total of 281 fresh retail chicken meat samples were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR)
241 out of the 262 samples tested negative for C. jejuni/coli by qPCR (92.0%; 88.1–94.7, 95%CI)
Summary
For more than 15 years, human campylobacteriosis has been a major food-borne disease in Europe with more than 240,000 reported cases per year [1]. The extraordinary high socio-economic burden is substantiated by the fact that the notification rate corresponds to an estimated number of about nine million cases of human campylobacteriosis annually in Europe [2]. The disease is mainly caused by Campylobacter (C.) jejuni and to a lesser extent by C. coli with approx. The handling, preparation, and consumption of chicken meat is a major risk factor and up to 50–80% of human cases could be attributed to C. jejuni/coli isolates from the chicken reservoir as a whole [3,4]. In 2018, broiler meat is still the fresh meat category with the highest contamination rates with C. jejuni/coli (37.5%) and
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