Prevalence of Campylobacter jejuni on turkey wings at the supermarket level

Campylobacter jejuni was found on 64.1% of 184 packaged fresh and on 55.6% of 81 frozen turkey wings purchased from local supermarkets over a 2-month period. The prevalence of the agent on the wings varied with sampling day. For fresh wings (12 samplings), it varied from 33.3% to 100% and for frozen wings (9 samplings), it varied from 17% to 100%. At a detection limit of 300 cells/wing, the mean number of C. jejuni on the positive fresh wings was 740 cells/wing (range 616 to 832) and on the frozen wings 890 cells/wing (range 661 to 1096). All fresh wings were purchased at the time of arrival at the supermarkets. Thirty packages of wings collected from the refrigerated shelves (2 to 4-d old) had no detectable C. jejuni .