THEIR IMPORTANCE TO THE HYGIENE OF POULTRY PRODUCTION

From the point of view of food hygiene poultry play a particularly important part in the transmission of Campylobacter jejuni to man. Optimizing the management of the birds so that their mutual infection is avoided is the first step in dealing with the problem. After this attention should be paid to the danger of contamination and its spread during the slaughtering process. Here again a number of measures to control Campylobacter organisms can be applied. At consumer level it is possible for everyone to avoid infection by handling raw poultry carefully. It would also be a good idea to develop a test serum containing all known antigen structures of the various Campylobacter jejuni strains so that, as with Salmonella test serum, a quicker identification of Campylobacter jejuni infections would be possible.