Backyard Poultry Can Cause Salmonella Outbreaks

Salmonella infections after eating store-bought poultry are familiar problems: Healthy commercial flocks might be colonized, and handling or eating undercooked meat or eggs can cause human infections. Recently, though, the increasing popularity of backyard poultry farming has added a new source of infection: live, privately owned birds (Figure 1).

U.S. CDC researchers analyzed 78 multistate outbreaks of salmonellosis associated with backyard poultry farming reported from 2018 to 2023.