Reference | Soonthornchaikul2006 (20023)

Thirty fresh pre-packaged organically-reared chickens (POCs) and 30 fresh pre-packaged intensively-reared chickens (PICs) were purchased from supermarkets (labelled as reared and processed in accordance with the EU Poultry Meat Marketing Standards Regulations [21]), and 30 fresh unpackaged butcher intensively-reared chickens (BICs) were purchased from butcher shops (no labelling or information was available on the origin and processing of these chickens). All supermarkets and butcher shops were located in northeast London. To reduce farm-specific effects and to sample as representatively as possible, the POC and PIC groups were randomly purchased from five separate major supermarket chains (which represent over 70% of total UK food retail volume sales). Similarly, for the BIC group, 10 separate butcher shops were used for chicken purchase.

To reduce possible temporal variation effects, timing of purchases from all supermarket and butcher shops was undertaken using 40 separate randomly allocated purchasing dates. Fresh samples (25 g) were obtained from three different parts of each of the carcasses as follows: body (meat and skin); cavity (10 swabs of fluid); and tail (whole). All samples were processed following the standard isolation and identification methods recommended by the United Kingdom Health Protection Agency [22,23].

AST Method: None

Reference explicitly reports AST breakpoints: True

Reference reports using a MIC table: True