Research bid to breed bug-resistant chickens

05-Mar-2012 - Last updated on 05-Mar-2012 at 13:06 GMT

Related tags Meat Bacteria

Super chick? Researchers hope to breed chickens that are resistant to Campylobacter

Chickens resistant to Campylobacter – a bacteria that is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the UK – could result from a new £1.3M research project.

The Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and poultry breeding company Aviagen have awarded researchers at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh the money for a three-year project to map genes in chicken responsible for resistance to the bug.

Once successfully mapped, it is hoped that more chickens with resistance to Campylobacter could be bred, which would reduce the chances of it entering the food chain in the first place.

Food poisoning

Campylobacter is responsible for more than 300,000 cases of food poisoning a year in England and Wales and costs the UK economy around £600M a year. It is usually passed to humans via poultry meat that has not been cooked or handled properly.

In 2010 the Food Standards Agency reported on a survey that estimated that 65% of chickens sold at retail were infected with Campylobacter.

Professor Peter Kaiser, from The Roslin Institute, who will lead the study, said: "We already know from our previous work with non-commercial birds that some chickens are able to reduce the levels of bacterium in their guts by 10,000 fold, relative to other breeds. We have already identified four regions of the genome that contribute to this resistance. This new research programme should allow us to locate the actual genes responsible for this increased resistance.

Food chain

"Our work offers [poultry breeders] the potential to develop a quick and targeted approach to breeding poultry that are more resistant to Campylobacter colonisation and so prevent it from entering the food chain."

Jim McAdam, Aviagen's UK breeding programme director, said: "While steps can and are being taken to reduce the chances of Campylobacter reaching people's plates, this research aims to get to the very heart of the problem: reducing the amount of Campylobacter in the poultry population through breeding for increased resistance to colonisation."

The research is funded by a BBSRC-LINK grant, which promotes academic and industrial collaboration in pre-competitive research.