Spraying chicken carcasses with viruses may sound crazy – but if the viruses are harmless to humans but lethal to food poisoning bacteria, it could be a way of making food safer.
“In theory, these sprays could be used to wash any carcass in any abattoir,” says Paul Barrow of the University of Nottingham, UK, who heads Supasalvac, the European consortium developing the technology. Supasalvac’s sprays contain a type of phage – a virus that only infects and kills certain strains of bacteria.
After testing a prototype spray on 300 chicken carcasses, Barrow’s team managed to reduce salmonella contamination by a thousandfold…
