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Farmed chickens could receive faecal transplants to protect against the infections that cause food poisoning in humans. A pilot study suggests the transplants are remarkably effective, and the team behind it are now trying to make it work on an industrial scale.

at the University of Liverpool, UK struck upon the initial idea after hearing that babies born by Caesarean section may have an unusual mix of microorganisms in their guts, because they have not passed through their mother鈥檚 vaginas and picked up bacteria.

鈥淚t hit me that every commercial chicken in the UK and other countries is the equivalent of a Caesarean section because there鈥檚 absolutely no contact between the chicken and the hen,鈥� says Wigley.

Wigley wondered whether he could give newly-hatched chicks a dose of the microorganisms they would otherwise miss out on by transferring them from adult chickens. His goal was to make the chicks less prone to Campylobacter infection 鈥� a bacterial infection and the biggest source of food poisoning from chicken.

鈥淭hey all thought I was absolutely bonkers,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e tried it and, much to our shock, it really did reduce the transmission of Campylobacter.鈥�

The transplants appear to cause no ill effects. The chicks grow a little more slowly, so at 36 days they tend to be 1.9 kilograms rather than 2kg, but it鈥檚 not yet clear if this is a result of the faecal transplants.

Wigley鈥檚 team are now figuring out how to do faecal transplants on a larger scale. To do this they need a less physically intensive process than performing the transplant by hand, as they did in the initial trial. Wigley thinks one option is to coat the microbes in a protected gel-coating that the chicks would then eat. A similar technique is used for vaccination.

Faecal transplant ethics

No matter how carefully it was done, a physical faecal transplant could cause distress or injury, says 聽at the RSPCA Science Research Group in the UK. However, she says the gel sounds potentially less risky and distressing.

Hawkins says the technique may work, but its necessity is symptomatic of a wider problem. 鈥淥n the one hand you can think, yes, this is great, this is helping control disease in farm animals,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut on the other hand, what are we doing to farm animals that we have to do this to keep them healthy?鈥� Chicks that get contact with their mothers would not need faecal transplants, she adds.

鈥淔rom a welfare point of view, I鈥檝e no doubt that would be better,鈥� says Wigley. But that would have a dramatic effect on price, potentially causing an individual chicken to cost over 拢20 each, he says.