THEIR IMPORTANCE TO THE HYGIENE OF POULTR Y PRODUCTION

From the point of view of food hygiene poultry play a particularly imp ortant part in the transmission of Campylobacter jejuni to man. Optimi zing the management of the birds so that their mutual infection is avo ided is the first step in dealing with the problem. After this attenti on 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 possib le for everyone to avoid infection by handling raw poultry carefully. It would also be a good idea to develop a test serum containing all kn own antigen structures of the various Campylobacter jejuni strains so that, as with Salmonella test serum, a quicker identification of Campy lobacter jejuni infections would be possible.