25 June 2026
A team of Italian researchers has uncovered a strikingly high 92.72% prevalence of Campylobacter spp. in poultry slaughterhouses, displaying alarming rates of multi-drug resistance.
Campylobacteriosis remains the most frequently reported foodborne gastrointestinal infection in Europe, causing thousands of hospitalizations and significant public health burdens annually. While commercial poultry flocks often carry these curved, Gram-negative bacteria in their digestive tracts asymptomatically, the slaughter and processing stages present a critical vulnerability. Improper hygiene practices during these steps can lead to severe cross-contamination of carcass surfaces, turning raw poultry products into primary vectors for human illness.
In a new study, scientists from the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Puglia e della Basilicata analyzed 55 processing samples, including cecal contents, neck skins, and carcass wash water, collected from two processing facilities in Southern Italy.
Results:
- Out of the 55 samples evaluated, 51 (92.72%) tested positive for Campylobacter. Specifically, 100% of cecal contents and wash water samples, alongside 80% of neck skin samples, harbored the pathogen.
- Crucially, 81.25% of the positive neck skin samples exceeded the strict European Union process hygiene threshold of 1000 CFU/g, demonstrating that even small-scale abattoirs pose massive contamination risks.
- Genotypic identification revealed that Campylobacter coli was the predominant species at 64.71%, while Campylobacter jejuni accounted for 35.29%. This is atypical, as C. jejuni historically drives the majority of human cases. The authors hypothesize that this shift stems from cross-contamination or regional proximity to swine farms, as genomic sequencing matched specific Multi-Locus Sequence Types (ST830 and ST7159) commonly recovered from pigs.
The most concerning findings emerged from phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). Over 35% of the isolated strains exhibited a multi-drug resistant (MDR) profile, showing resistance to three or more distinct classes of antibiotics. Fluoroquinolone resistance was found to be staggering: 100% of C. jejuni strains and 72.72% of C. coli strains were resistant to ciprofloxacin.
Di Taranto et al. (2026). Campylobacter spp. in Poultry Slaughterhouses: Occurrence, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Virulence-Associated Genes. Pathogens, 15(6), 585.
