A food critic I know was eating a ‘posh restaurant Sunday lunch’ when her husband was served a piece of undercooked chicken. Soon after, he was ‘violently sick’. This normally strapping man became so weakened he was off work for a fortnight and even now is much more prone to stomach problems than before. All from some chicken. Campylobacter – which is what caused this unlucky man’s collapse – is the great unspoken food scandal of our times. It is the most common cause of food poisoning in Britain. In 2009 it was responsible for an estimated 371,000 cases, resulting in 17,500 hospitalisations and 88 deaths. Yet, compared with E.coli or salmonella, few have heard of it. This bacteria may be found in red meat and unpasteurised milk, but the main cause of infection is through chicken. Bob Martin, the head of the strategy at the Food Standards Agency to reduce foodborne disease, explains that chicken-liver pâté is a particular risk. Big outbreaks happen after catered events where pinkly underdone liver parfait is served. ‘There is a tendency among chefs to cook liver very lightly to turn an inexpensive ingredient into something upmarket,’ says Martin, but searing doesn’t kill the campylobacter ‘in the deep tissue of the liver’.
