FSA publishes new advice on nicarbazin for poultry

The Food Standards Agency has published a new leaflet to help poultry producers, their managers and workers reduce nicarbazin residues in chicken through better feed storage and feed management systems.

Nicarbazin is a medicated feed additive used to treat a debilitating poultry disease called coccidiosis, but routine surveillance by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate continues to find a small number of samples of chicken livers with detectable levels of the drug.

While it is not a food safety issue with no risk to human health, both the FSA and poultry sector are keen to eliminate it totally.

Therefore, the FSA has spent the last two years working with the British Poultry Council, National Farmers’ Union and VMD in a project, aimed at finding the cause and ultimately, drawing up a series of practical recommendations for producers.

The group appointed an independent project co-ordinator, Maire Burnett, who collated information from 275 farms producing the tested birds. Data included feed management as well as other factors when the birds sampled were being reared.

The leaflet is being emailed to producers and can be printed out as a poster. It was produced following the publication of the joint Government and industry report “Reducing the incidence and levels of nicarbazin residues in British chicken” in May 2008.