LONDON: Some 70 per cent of fresh chickens on sale in Britain are contaminated with a food poisoning bug, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said on Thursday, warning that retailers must raise their game.

A six-month survey of chilled whole birds found that 18pc also tested positive at the highest level of contamination for campylobacter, the government body said.

None of the major supermarkets met industry standards for reducing the bacteria, which is killed during cooking but still affects 280,000 people in Britain each year.

Most of the cases are caused by poultry and in rare instances campylobacter can cause death.

In February, the FSA began a year-long survey of retail chickens to establish the scale of the problem. Now at the half-way point, it has named and shamed the worst performers.

Supermarket Asda came out top with 78pc of its chickens testing positive and 28 percent showing the highest levels of campylobacter, defined as more than 1,000 colony-forming units per gram (cfu/g).

Its rival Tesco performed the best, but even then had 64pc of chickens testing positive and 11pc recording the highest levels of the bacteria.

“These results show that the food industry, especially retailers, need to do more to reduce the amount of campylobacter on fresh chickens,” said FSA director of policy Steve Wearne.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2014