IN Brief:
- UKHSA recorded 10,406 non-typhoidal Salmonella cases in England in 2025.
- Campylobacter remained high, while listeriosis continued to pose severe risks for vulnerable groups.
- The data reinforces pressure on food safety systems, supplier controls, hygiene audits, and outbreak prevention.
The UK Health Security Agency has recorded 10,406 laboratory-confirmed cases of non-typhoidal Salmonella in England for 2025, the highest annual figure in a decade.
The total is slightly above the 10,389 cases recorded in 2024 and remains well above the 8,242 cases seen in 2016. Salmonella and Campylobacter continue to be among the most common causes of food poisoning, with Campylobacter cases standing at 69,394 in 2025, down slightly from 70,392 in 2024.
Salmonella and Campylobacter infections are commonly associated with contaminated food, including poultry, meat, eggs, raw fruit and vegetables, and unpasteurised milk products. Infection can also spread through close contact with infected people or through cross-contamination, including where utensils, surfaces, or handling systems allow raw and cooked foods to come into contact.
The latest data also highlights the continuing severity of listeriosis. England and Wales recorded 181 listeriosis cases in 2025, compared with 179 in 2024. The infection remains particularly dangerous for older people, immunocompromised individuals, people with underlying health conditions, and pregnant women.
For food producers, the figures place renewed attention on controls that sit behind routine production. Salmonella risk cuts across primary production, slaughter, egg handling, raw material intake, chilled distribution, processing hygiene, environmental monitoring, cleaning validation, and finished product control. In complex supply chains, the risk is rarely confined to one weak point.
Certification, audit, and hygiene verification have already been moving in that direction. NSF expands UK hygiene audit offering set out how hygiene assessments and risk-based inspection are becoming more important as manufacturers seek stronger evidence of control. The UKHSA data gives that operational pressure a sharper public health context.
Imported food controls remain part of the same picture. In Ashford border checks stop unsafe imports, consignments were stopped because of infectious disease risk, contaminants, poor temperature control, and unsanitary transport conditions. Domestic enforcement, border checks, supplier assurance, and manufacturer due diligence all contribute to the same contamination-control chain.
The rise in confirmed Salmonella cases does not identify a single failing across manufacturing, retail, catering, or domestic food handling. Surveillance changes, outbreak detection, reporting behaviour, travel, imports, and consumer handling can all affect annual totals. Even so, consistently high case numbers leave little margin for weakness in plants handling poultry, eggs, meat, raw ingredients, chilled foods, and ready-to-eat products.
HACCP systems remain central, but the operating environment around them is becoming more demanding. Retailer expectations are more data-heavy, enforcement activity is increasingly intelligence-led, and customers expect companies to demonstrate control across wider supplier networks. Paper-based compliance cannot compensate for poor segregation, weak cleaning validation, uncontrolled chilled storage, inadequate thermal processing, or slow response to environmental monitoring results.
Traceability has become part of food safety infrastructure. When contamination is detected, the ability to identify affected lots, raw material batches, production windows, and distribution routes determines how quickly a product can be isolated or withdrawn. Coding systems, digital production records, supplier data, and audit trails now sit alongside physical controls as part of recall readiness.
European Salmonella incidents linked to eggs and poultry show how quickly pathogen risks can move across borders and product categories. Egg and poultry inputs can pass into sauces, bakery, chilled meals, mayonnaise, desserts, and prepared foods, placing pressure on supplier approval, incoming checks, testing regimes, and validated kill steps.
The practical response is stronger verification of the controls already expected to prevent contamination reaching finished product. With Salmonella cases at a decade high and Campylobacter still elevated, hygiene, segregation, supplier assurance, and rapid traceability remain core manufacturing disciplines, not compliance exercises to revisit only after an outbreak.
