Consumer Reports, NCC speak out about safety of chicken products
Consumer Reports has issued a report on its latest study on chicken breasts purchased at supermarkets. Consumer Reports found bacteria that could make consumers sick on nearly all of the 316 raw chicken breasts purchased at retail nationwide. The full report, "The High Cost of Cheap Chicken," is featured in the February 2014 issue of Consumer Reports and online at www.ConsumerReports.org.
While Consumer Reports has consistently been testing chicken for more than 15 years, this is the first time it has looked at the contamination rates for six different bacteria – enterococcus (79.8 percent), E. coli (65.2 percent), campylobacter (43 percent), klebsiella pneumonia (13.6 percent), salmonella (10.8 percent), and staphylococcus aureus (9.2 percent). It also evaluated every bacterium for antibiotic resistance and found that about half the chicken samples harbored at least one multidrug-resistant bacteria.