Survey of Belgian consumption patterns and consumer behaviour of poultry meat to provide insight in risk factors for campylobacteriosis

A survey was set-up using a web-application supplemented with a print-out questionnaire to gather knowledge on consumption patterns and consumer behaviour in the storage and preparation of poultry meat, in particular poultry meat preparations for Belgian adults. In total 1618 respondents were reached. The survey included questions on risk factors associated with campylobacteriosis i.e. storage conditions, potential for cross-contamination and undercooking. Almost 61% of the respondents have identified home freezing of fresh poultry meat as a common storage technique. Several cross-contamination routes in the kitchen are confirmed, e.g. putting cooked poultry meat at the same plate of the raw poultry meat (11.2%), not washing hands after handling raw poultry meat (11%), using the same knife (6.7%) or cutting board (8.2%) for the vegetables which was prior used for the poultry meat. Although the majority of the respondents indicated to eat their poultry meat well-cooked (96% for poultry meat preparations to 98.4% for broiler), 16% would eat not well-cooked poultry meat if served at a barbecue. Poultry parts not marinated or seasoned was ranked as eaten the most, followed by broiler and next meat preparations (with first the marinated/seasoned poultry cuts and second the minced poultry meat preparations). The gathered consumer data may now be incorporated into a retail to fork quantitative risk assessment model for poultry meat preparations to estimate the risk for campylobacteriosis to the Belgian consumer and to enable the evaluation of risk mitigation strategies (to support risk managers) in the consumer phase. A proper comparison of the contribution of the different pathways to consumers’ exposure (i.e. effect of freezing during storage, prevalence of undercooking and cross-contamination) to Campylobacter bacteria may now be performed.