10 July 2026
The Swedish Veterinary Agency (SVA), in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten), the National Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket), and the Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket), has published its comprehensive annual surveillance report, titled "Smittläget i Sverige för djursjukdomar och zoonoser 2025" (The Infectious Disease Situation in Sweden for Animal Diseases and Zoonoses 2025).
The report delivers essential scientific data and epidemiological analyses regarding key avian pathogens – Salmonella, Campylobacter and Avian Influenza, that impacted the Swedish poultry sector and public health in 2025.
Salmonella:
1. Poultry Flock Surveillance: Broiler Sector: Among broiler breeders, 3 adult flocks (2.42%) tested positive for S. Enteritidis. In commercial broiler production, only 5 out of 3,715 flocks (0.13%) were positive, yielding isolates of S. Typhimurium, S. Derby, and S. Muenster.
Layer Sector: Seven table-egg producing flocks out of 903 tested positive (0.78%), with S. Enteritidis accounting for 5 of the cases.
Other Poultry: Three turkey flocks out of 117 were positive (0.84%), while no cases were detected in geese or ducks.
Public Health Impact: A major foodborne outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis emerged in August 2025, infecting 118 people across 14 regions. Epidemiological investigations linked 74 of these cases to a central kitchen serving two elderly care homes. Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) confirmed that the outbreak strain was identical to the S. Enteritidis clone responsible for a massive national outbreak in 2022/2023, which had also re-emerged briefly at the same laying hen facility in 2024.
2. Campylobacter: Thermophilic Campylobacter spp. was detected in just 4.1% of broiler slaughter batches (200 out of 4,872 batches). This marks the lowest annual prevalence ever recorded in the history of the Swedish broiler sector. At the slaughterhouse level, official neck-skin monitoring showed that only 1.1% of samples exceeded the strict process hygiene limit of 1,000 CFU/g.
3. Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI): Sweden recorded 8 distinct HPAI H5N1 outbreaks in commercial poultry and captive birds during 2025, all concentrated in the high-density poultry region of Skåne in southern Sweden.
