Food watchdog pledges action on chicken E.coli

THE food watchdog has pledged to cut the use of antibiotics on farms after it emerged that a quarter of supermarket chicken has superbug strains of E.coli.

The Food Standards Agency says consumers face a ‘significant threat’ to health from antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

It spoke out after the Mail reported yesterday on research that found antibioticresistant strains of the food-poisoning bacteria E.coli on 24 per cent of 92 chicken samples from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co-op and Aldi.

Such superbug strains kill more than 5,500 people a year in England alone.

The rise of food-borne superbugs has been attributed to the use of antibiotics to treat chicken, pigs and cattle that fall sick.

Bugs such as E.coli, campylobacter and salmonella have mutated to develop a resistance to the antibiotics known as antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. Anyone who falls ill after coming into contact with these bacteria will be harder to cure.

The FSA has been carrying out its own tests to establish the scale of the problem, with results due out this year. It said: ‘AMR is a significant threat to public health. We aim to reduce the use of antimicrobials in food production animals.’