London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Brendan Wren, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "This study confirms what we have suspected - that most of our retail chicken are contaminated with Campylobacter, a nasty pathogen that can cause severe diarrhoea and other complications. Frankly it is scandalous that two out of three chickens brought into our households are contaminated with such a serious pathogen, I can't think of any other situation where this would be allowed. It is no use blaming the consumer for poor hygiene, the problem has to be stopped at source. Our poultry flocks need to be vaccinated against Campylobacter, even if this slightly increases the cost of poultry products."