WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Industrial chicken farming is helping the spread of Campylobacter, the world's most common bacterial cause of diarrhea, according to a new study.
'As the chicken population has exploded, they've increasingly picked up strains from different wild birds and become a cauldron of bacterial evolution,' said senior author Prof Sam Sheppard of the University of Oxford. 'Lots of strains come together and hybridise. We do not want that, because that's where new Frankenstein monster bugs emerge.'
Researchers from the University of Oxford's Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research found that as chicken farming has grown, the exchange of Campylobacter strains between wild birds and chickens has increased sharply. This allows the bacteria to spread more easily, mix with other strains, and develop new traits. The study also found a rise in antibiotic-resistant strains, which could make serious infections in people harder to treat.
For the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers analyzed nearly 2,800 bacterial genomes collected from chickens and wild birds in 30 countries, including the U.K. and the U.S., between 1979 and 2024.
The analysis showed that the rapid growth of chicken farming has created ideal conditions for the bacteria to spread and evolve. Researchers identified genetic changes that help Campylobacter survive in chicken farms, including genes linked to antibiotic resistance, protection against stress, better movement, and improved ability to obtain nutrients.
'Cooking kills pathogens, but just a tiny splash and it's on your lettuce leaves or your hands or your knife,' cautioned Sheppard.
The study also suggests that large, crowded chicken farms can act like 'pathogen sponges,' allowing bacteria from different sources to gather, multiply, and spread. Computer models showed that once chicken populations become large enough, bacterial strains from wild birds can continue spreading within poultry flocks even if they were not originally well suited to chickens.
Copyright(c) 2026 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
© 2026 AFX News
