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A CHEMICAL that makes chickens grow bigger and faster also suppresses the
bacteria that have become the leading cause of food poisoning, researchers in
Britain have found.

Fresie Fernandez, a microbiologist from the University of Bristol, found an
enzyme called xylanase can dramatically limit numbers of the bacterium
Campylobacter jejuni in chickens’ gut. Almost all chickens carry the
bacteria without becoming ill. But if humans eat Campylobacter-infected
poultry that hasn’t been cooked properly, the corkscrew-shaped bugs squirm into
the slimy mucus that lines our intestines, causing cramps and diarrhoea. In
Britain and the US, Campylobacter has become the leading cause of food
poisoning.

Fernandez and her colleagues fed Campylobacter-infected chicks wheat
laced with 0.1 per cent xylanase, a natural enzyme already used by some poultry
farmers to promote growth. The enzyme is also used in bread-making. It makes the
mucous lining of chickens’ stomachs thinner and less sticky, allowing nutrients
to be absorbed more effectively and helping the birds to grow.

But Fernandez found that after a month, the number of bugs in the chickens’
guts fell by up to 99 per cent. The researchers suspect that the bugs are
flushed from the chickens’ systems more quickly when the mucous lining is
thinner and more fluid.

Fernandez thinks that chicken farmers could use xylanase as a simple way to
make poultry meat much safer to eat without having to use antibiotics. “I think
that all companies should use this,” she says.