“Tailgating a tractor trailer is much more dangerous than being around live chickens,” the National Chicken Council in the United States said in December. That statement follows widespread publicity regarding a John Hopkins University study claiming that diseases could be spread by transporting chickens in crates on flatbed trucks.
In the study, published in the first issue of the Journal of Infection and Public Health, scientists took samples from air and the surface of cars driven “two to three car lengths” behind chicken trucks for 17 miles.