A blue light could significantly reduce the amount of food poisoning caused by raw chicken, scientists have found.<\/p>\n
The University of Reading research found shining violet-blue light onto campylobacter, the most common global cause of bacterial food poisoning, killed all 64 strains tested in a lab.<\/p>\n
Campylobacter, which can cause stomach cramps and bloody diarrhoea, is found in about three quarters of raw chicken sold in the UK.<\/p>\n
Researchers said trials on naturally contaminated carcasses were needed before the technology could be used commercially.<\/p>\n
The illness caused by campylobacter has been estimated to cost \u00a3700m a year in healthcare and lost productivity.<\/p>\n
The study, carried out with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and published in the journal Microbiology, used strains taken directly from UK poultry, including some resistant to antibiotics.<\/p>\n
Lead author Dr Aidan Taylor said: “What’s exciting about this light-based approach is that it doesn’t rely on chemicals or antibiotics at all, so it sidesteps the resistance problem entirely.”<\/p>\n
While cooking kills campylobacter, cross-contamination from handling raw meat is thought to be the main way people are infected.<\/p>\n
The light does not need to touch the food and uses no chemicals, meaning it could be used on carcasses in processing plants before chicken reaches shops.<\/p>\n
The researchers estimate cutting contamination 100-fold could reduce the share of highly contaminated carcasses reaching shops from about one in 10 to one in 50.<\/p>\n
Antibiotic-resistant strains were killed as effectively as others, and one strain showed no sign of building up tolerance after being exposed to the light 15 times in a row.<\/p>\n
Dr Samuel Connelly, from APHA, who co-led the research, said the results were “highly encouraging” but further testing on contaminated meat was needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A blue light could significantly reduce the amount of food poisoning caused by raw chicken, scientists have found.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}