Cross contamination of Campylobacter on chicken meat, risk assessment to human health: practice simulations of chicken meat processing at family household

Abstract

Cross-contamination plays an important role in the transmission of food-borne illness, especially for
Campylobacter. A survey involving 150 households and four scenarios using Campylobacter artificially
inoculation to simulation of boiled chicken meat processing were conducted to determine the chicken meat
eating and processing habit, as well as determine the rate and risk of Campylobacter cross-contamination
in the boiled chicken meat. The surveyed results showed that 100% of the surveyed family households
in Ha Noi eating the boiled chicken meat. The time to boil the chicken meat was 18.63±3.88 minutes.
The result of simulation experiments indicated that the risk factors, such as cook’s hands, washed water,
knives and cutting boards (77.8 -100%) direct contacting with the Campylobacter contamination raw
chicken meat were the main source of spreading this bacteria to the other surfaces, stuffs and food if the
above risk factors were not well controlled. Moreover, the experiment demonstrated a high risk of bacterial
contamination to the boiled chicken meat when using the same knives, cutting boards and cook’s hands
that contacted with the raw chicken meat before that. Among the simulation scenarios, using the same
cutting boards induced the highest risk of cross-contamination with Campylobacter (66.7%), the same
knives (22.2%) and the same cook’s hands (0%). These findings emphasize the role of cleaning hands
and processing tools properly as well as using separate set of knives and cutting boards for the cooked
stuffs would significantly reduce the cross-contamination of Campylobacter