Poultry products safe in Romania despite sporadic salmonella outbreaks

Poultry flocks in Romania are permanently monitored for salmonella and all legal measures are taken in case of an outbreak, a union leader said on Friday. Ilie Van, president of the Union of Poultry Breeders in Romania, made the remarks after 37,000 birds in a local farm were found contaminated with salmonella enteritidis. Van criticized the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority for failing to offer explanations about the risks to humans when releasing the news and thus creating panic on the market. The veterinary authority announced that the entire flock was slaughtered and the 53 tons of resulting meat was destroyed. "Where there are poultry flocks, there are also risks," Van said, adding that the authorities had taken the measures according to European and world legal procedures. Van explained that salmonella is a bacterium with a low degree of spreading and out of more than 2,500 salmonella serotypes, only two are dangerous to humans but can be destroyed if the products are heated to 70 degrees. "I believe no one consumes raw poultry meat," he added. The Union of Poultry Breeders controls 550 farms across the country, the top 15 of which produce 60 percent of the country's chicken meat, according to statistics. Romania's poultry consumption amounts to some 400,000 tons, over 85 percent of which is produced domestically.