Assessing the Risk of Seasonal Effects of Campylobacter Contaminated Broiler Meat Prepared In-Home in the United States

Abstract

Campylobacter has consistently posed a food safety issue in broiler meat. This study aimed to create a quantitative microbial risk assessment model from retail to consumption, designed to evaluate the seasonal risk of campylobacteriosis associated with broiler meat consumption in the United States. To achieve this, data was gathered to build distributions that would enable us to predict the growth of Campylobacter during various stages such as retail storage, transit, and home storage. The model also included potential fluctuations in concentration during food preparation and potential cross-contamination scenarios. A Monte Carlo simulation with 100,000 iterations was used to estimate the risk of infection per serving and the number of infections in the United States by season. In the summer, chicken meat was estimated to have a median risk of infection per serving of 9.22 × 10^-7 and cause an average of about 27,058,680 infections. During the winter months, the median risk of infection per serving was estimated to be 4.06 × 10^-7 and cause an average of about 12,085,638 infections. The risk assessment model provides information about the risk of broiler meat to public health by season. These results will help understand the most important steps to reduce the food safety risks from contaminated chicken products.

Keywords: Campylobacter; chicken meat; food safety; risk assessment; seasonal effect.

Figure 1

Overview of the quantitative microbial risk assessment model.

Figure 2

Cumulative distribution functions for log number of infections per season.

Figure 3

Cumulative distribution functions for log number of illnesses per season.

Figure 4

Spearman’s correlation coefficients show the eight most important model parameters for predicting the total number of infections in broiler meat.