According to a federal report released Monday, there’s some “encouraging” news regarding antimicrobial resistance in foodborne pathogens. The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System’s (NARMS) published its 2012 Retail Meat Report and an interim report for 2013 solely focused on Salmonella.
The reports stated that there was a decrease in third-generation cephalosporin resistance among poultry meats in 2012 and 2013, and resistance in Salmonella from retail chicken and ground turkey had declined to 20 percent and 9 percent of samples, respectively. NARMS also found that Salmonella from retail meats remains susceptible to ciprofloxacin, one of the most important antibiotics for treating Salmonella infections. And while multi-drug resistant Salmonella was detected in all retail meat sources, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said there was a continuous decline in the proportion of poultry isolates between 2011 and 2013. As for Campylobacter, nearly half of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli from retail chicken were tetracycline-resistant in 2012. However, only 1 percent of C. jejuni from retail chicken was resistant to erythromycin, the drug of choice for treating Campylobacter infections. One concerning finding of the report was that since 2005, when FDA withdrew approval for the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry, there haven’t been any consistent changes in fluoroquinolone resistance among C. jejuni and C. coli recovered from retail chicken. The interim retail meat report created by NARMS for 2013 includes serotype distribution, prevalence by food source and state, and some resistance patterns. FDA also announced that it plans to issue these interim reports biannually, although the 2013 report covers a full year. The agency cautioned that the interim reports only reflect prevalence and not trends.
