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The primary objective was to determine the prevalence of indicator microorganisms [Staphylococcus aureus, non-S. aureus staphylococci (NSAS), coliforms and aerobic bacteria] for contamination of chicken carcasses, carcass drip and rinse water from the informal chicken market in Gauteng, South Africa.

Chicken swabs, chicken drips and rinse waters were collected from 151 chickens from 47 random outlets. Pre-tested questionnaires were administered to capture the risk factors for bacterial contamination. Standard microbiological procedures were conducted for isolation and enumeration of target bacteria.

NSAS (64% and 41%) and S. aureus (12% and 31%) were prevalent on carcasses and in carcass drip respectively. Coliforms (62%) and aerobic bacteria (85%) were detected in rinse water. Significant risk factors for contamination of carcasses with NSAS, S. aureus and coliform organisms were: evisceration of chickens on the same location used for sale, cleaning of display counter with dirty clothes/wipes, holding of differently sourced chickens in the same cage prior to slaughter, not cleaning the display table/counter and hands at all, washing knives in rinse water, high turnover of daily slaughter and length of time to display chickens.

The limitations of this research were the limited geographical coverage and small sample size.

The isolation of these indicator microorganisms suggests the potential presence of other chicken-borne pathogens not tested for in the study.

The findings serve to inform policy on public health and street-vended food and can guide control on good sanitary practices.

This is the first comprehensive report on ready to eat chickens from the informal markets in Gauteng, South Africa.

The lengthy review of the Food Standards Committee of this, agreed by all public analysts and enforcement officers, as the most complicated and difficult of food groups subject to detailed legislative control, is at last complete and the Committee's findings set out in their Report. When in 1975 they were requested to investigate the workings of the legislation, the problems of control were already apparent and getting worse. The triology of Regulations of 1967 seemed comprehensive at the time, perhaps as we ventured to suggest a little too comprehensive for a rational system of control for arguments on meat contents of different products, descriptions and interpretation generally quickly appeared. The system, for all its detail, provided too many loopholes through which manufacturers drove the proverbial “carriage and pair”. As meat products have increased in range and the constantly rising price of meat, the “major ingredient”, the number of samples taken for analysis has risen and now usually constitutes about one‐quarter of the total for the year, with sausages, prepared meats (pies, pasties), and most recently, minced meat predominating. Just as serial sampling and analysis of sausages before the 1967 Regulations were pleaded in courts to establish usage in the matter of meat content, so with minced meat the same methods are being used to establish a maximum fat content usage. What concerns food law enforcement agencies is that despite the years that the standards imposed by the 1967 Regulations have been in force, the number of infringements show no sign of reduction. This should not really surprise us; there are even longer periods of failures to comply; eg., in the use of preservatives which have been controlled since 1925! What a number of public analysts have christened the “beefburger saga” took its rise post‐1967 and shows every indication of continuing into the distant future. Manufacturers appear to be trying numerous ploys to reduce the content below the Regulation 80% mainly by giving their products new names. Each year, public analysts report a flux of new names and ingenious defences; eg, “caterburgers” and similar concocted nomenclature, and the defence that because the name does not incorporate a meat, it is outside the statutory standard.

Earlier in the year, during the national steel industry strike, the House of Lords overturned a judgment of Lord Denning, MR, that sections of the industry unaffected by the trade dispute could be regarded as outside the Act and its amendments and that unions could be restrained in their application of immune activities to those firms. The decision apart, their Lordships in delivering judgment reaffirmed that only Parliament had power to make the Law; it was not the function of Judges to do this, their's to interpret and apply the Law. In strict legal terms and applying to statutes and statutory instruments, this is true; but in the widest sense, judges have been making law for centuries. Otherwise, from whence cometh the Common Law, one of the wonders of the world, if not from the mouths of H.M. Judges. Much of it is now enshrined in statute form, especially Criminal Law, but initially it was all judge‐made. In most systems of human control and function, complete separation is rarely possible and when attempted the results have not been conspicuously successful.

Poultry meat is a significant source of food poisoning throughout most of the developed world. In England and Wales it has been regularly implicated in human salmonellosis, and during 1984‐5 was the apparent vehicle of infection in 32 per cent of family and general outbreaks. From 1988 onwards the explosive increase in UK food poisoning due to Salmonella enteritidis phage type 4 has further implicated poultry because of the particular association of this organism with chickens. The present situation provides a considerable challenge for the industry, where the modern scale and conditions of breeding, rearing and processing are highly conducive to the spread of minority organisms such as salmonellas. It also highlights the need for improved control measures, especially for protecting flocks against salmonella infection to reduce the hazard of subsequent cross‐contamination in the processing plant.

Transmission routes that may contribute to the overall picture of campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis were explored by analysing the outside surfaces of 300 retail raw chicken packs for prevalence and enumeration of Campylobacter using a MPN/PCR assay and Salmonella using a MPN/visual immunoassay procedure. The surfaces of 72 packs (24.0 per cent) were externally contaminated with C. jejuni; 32 with counts of <6 MPN/pack and the remaining 40 with counts ranging from 6 to >2,200 MPN/pack. One whole chicken sample (0.3 per cent) was contaminated with S. Tennessee at <6 MPN/pack. The surfaces of offal packs were most contaminated with Campylobacter, with 18 per cent having a count of ≥100 MPN/pack in comparison with chicken portion packs (4/200, 2 per cent) and whole bird packs (1/50, 2 per cent). These observations suggest that packs could be a source of cross‐contamination, however, the contribution of this outer surface contamination pathway to foodborne illness can only be properly determined by development of a validated risk assessment model.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze perceptions of quality in the chicken meat supply chain.

This survey covered 74 different farms, slaughterhouses, meat processors, and retailers and 500 consumers, using two methods. From the farm to retail, analysis covered “customer – supplier” viewpoints in different stages of the supply chain. From the consumers to the farms, the quality function deployment method was used. Five houses of quality have been developed using the Delphi method to synthesize the opinions of experts.

Farm-slaughter comparison shows that final weight at farm gate and animal welfare are the most important quality attributes. The quality aspect important for slaughterhouses and meat processors is the cold chain. Retailers and meat processors highlight the portfolio of various chicken meat products as their most important quality attribute. At the points of sale, shelf illumination and product placement are prevailing.

The results suggest that there are different views on quality by all actors in the supply chain, from quality of chicken meat, food safety and quality of service in retail to profitability and animal welfare.

The paper enhances simplicity in analyzing quality aspects of different types of meat supply chains. This methodology enables a synergy of value chain promotion with other quality development approaches. It also creates possibilities for policy makers to improve competitiveness strategies.

Application of a similar approach to other parts of the food chain could offer a better insight into the transformation of quality.

In a recent reference to changes brought about by the local government reorganisation of 1974, we criticised some of the names given to the new areas. Some of these name changes have made difficulties for those who follow from afar the doings of local authorities, as well as raising the ire of local people. Local names, however, are not the only casualty. The creation of new and larger governmental organisations rarely, if ever, results in economy and as anticipated, it was not long before the new local authorities were being directed to embrace financial stringency and all that it incurs. One such other casualty has been the loss of so many of the annual reports of local authority departments, very few now arriving at BFJ offices. In every case, the reason has been the same—severe restrictions on spending. Not that this was not necessary in many fields, but in respect of annual reports, we are convinced it was false economy. For so many of the reports, it was our pleasure to review them in the pages of BFJ. A prominent Labour politician was once heard to refer to them as “hard and dry reports for hard and dry officials”. It all depends probably on what you are looking for in them. Statistics there must be but most enforcement officers and public analysts, endeavour to keep these to the minimum, the general impression being that these are “dry”. If you are looking for trends, for comparison of the year under review with preceding years and then for comparing the results reported in one part of the country with another, where the population, eating habits, consumer reactions may be different, the tables of statistics are highly important.

At each New Year we stand at the threshold of fresh scenes and hopes, of opportunities and pastures new. It is the time for casting off shackles and burdens that have weighed us down in the old year; almost a new chapter of life. We scan the prevailing scene for signs that will chart the year's unrolling and beyond, and hope profoundly for a smooth passage. The present is largely the product of the past, but of the future, who knows? Man therefore forever seems to be entering upon something new—a change, a challenge, events of great portent. This, of course, is what life is all about. Trends usually precede events, often by a decade or more, yet it is a paradox that so many are taken by surprise when they occur. Trends there have been and well marked; signs, too, for the discerning. In fields particular, they portend overall progress; in general, not a few bode ill.

The long controversy that has waxed furiously around the implementation of the EEC Directives on the inspection of poultry meat and hygiene standards to be observed in poultry slaughterhouses, cutting‐up premises, &c, appears to be resolved at last. (The Prayer lodged against the Regulations when they were formally laid before Parliament just before the summer recess, which meant they would have to be debated when the House reassembled, could have resulted in some delay to the early operative dates, but little chance of the main proposals being changed.) The controversy began as soon as the EEC draft directive was published and has continued from the Directive of 1971 with 1975 amendments. There has been long and painstaking study of problems by the Ministry with all interested parties; enforcement was not the least of these. The expansion and growth of the poultry meat industry in the past decade has been tremendous and the constitution of what is virtually a new service, within the framework of general food inspection, was inevitable. None will question the need for efficient inspection or improved and higher standards of hygiene, but the extent of the organization in the first and the enormous cost of structural and other alterations to premises in the second, were seen as formidable tasks, and costly. The execution and enforcement of the new Regulations is assigned to local authorities (District, Metropolitan and London Borough Councils), who are empowered to make charges for inspection, licences, etc., to recoup the full costs of administration. The Government had previously promised that the cost of this new service, which when fully operative, will be significant, would not fall upon the already over‐burdened economies of local authorities. The figure of a penny per bird is given; in those areas with very large poultry processing plants, with annual outputs counted in millions of birds, this levy should adequately cover costs of enforcing the Regulations, but there are many areas with only one of a few small concerns with annual killings of perhaps no more than 200,000 birds—this much we know from perusing annual health reports received at the offices of this Journal—and the returns from charges will certainly be inadequate to cover the cost of extra staff. The Regulations require the appointment of “official veterinary surgeons” and “poultry meat inspectors”, both new to local government.

After great Wars, the years that follow are always times of disquiet and uncertainty; the country is shabby and exhausted, but beneath it, there is hope, expectancy, nay! certainty, that better times are coming. Perhaps the golden promise of the fifties and sixties failed to mature, but we entered the seventies with most people confident that the country would turn the corner; it did but unfortunately not the right one! Not inappropriate they have been dubbed the “striking seventies”. The process was not one of recovery but of slow, relentless deterioration. One way of knowing how your country is going is to visit others. At first, prices were cheaper that at home; the £ went farther and was readily acceptabble, but year by year, it seemed that prices were rising, but it was in truth the £ falling in value; no longer so easily changed. Most thinking Continentals had only a sneer for “decadent England”. Kinsmen from overseas wanted to think well of us but simply could not understand what was happening.