Spotlight on avian pathology: untangling contradictory disease descriptions of necrotic enteritis and necro-haemorrhagic enteritis in broilers.

Necrotic enteritis (NE) is one of the most detrimental infectious diseases in the modern poultry industry, characterized by necrosis in the small intestine. It is commonly accepted that NetB-producing C. perfringens type G strains are responsible for the disease. However, based on both macroscopic and histopathological observations, two distinct types of NE are observed. To date, both a haemorrhagic form of NE and the type G-associated non-haemorrhagic disease entity are commonly referred to as NE and the results from scientific research are interchangeably used, without distinguishing between the disease entities. Therefore, we propose to rename the haemorrhagic disease entity to necro-haemorrhagic enteritis.