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When you buy raw meat at the grocery store, you often bring more than dinner.
"The chances of you buying a product that is contaminated with a drug-resistant bacteria are very high," said Dr. Lance Price. Price is the founding director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University, a leading research laboratory of the Milken School of Public Health.
"We are raising 9 billion animals for human consumption to be slaughtered and turned into meat," said Price. "When we regularly give them low doses of antibiotics, we only fuel the growth of bacteria, drug-resistant bacteria, which can spread among these animals, and then they are distributed in all grocery stores across the country.
It is estimated that 70% of the antibiotics used in America are donated to farm animals that end up on your plate.
"Food animal producers should be cautious when they use antibiotics," Price said. We can not just use them to prevent the infections they cause by raising animals in a way that makes them sick. We must raise animals in a way that promotes their health and we do not need to use antibiotics. "
Last month, raw beef and chicken contaminated with antibiotic-resistant salmonella was discovered in 36 states. Millions of pounds of meat were recalled and hundreds of people became ill.
So we wondered how easy it would be to find antibiotic-resistant bacteria if we did our own random sampling.
S & # 39; proves, very easy.
We purchased two dozen poultry samples from four major national retailers, ranging from chicken breasts to minced chicken, ground turkey, turkey burgers and drumsticks.
In one afternoon, we bought, tagged and packaged each pack on ice and delivered our coolers to Mr. Price's lab.
The tests were conducted in two phases.
First, Dr. Price's lab identified the four most common bacteria that can cause food-borne illnesses: E. coli, Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Campylobacter.
Then they determined whether the bacteria were resistant to antibiotics.
Two weeks later, the results were as follows: 88% of our samples contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And not just a guy.
The combinations of E. Coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter and Staphylococcus were resistant to antibiotics two to 17 times per sample. Drugs considered to be among the most important on the planet, such as amoxicillin, Cipro and tetracycline, have often been rendered useless.
"Ninety percent, basically, of the samples you gave us were positive for E. coli," said Price. "We probably have animal feces in all that meat, but it's also an important pathogen and when you look at what E. coli was resistant to is tetracycline, one of the drugs for which was the most resistant, or most often resistant, which is also the drug we use most often for animal production in the United States. "
The World Health Organization considers tetracycline to be one of the most important antibiotics on the planet. This test, along with many other drugs classified "critical" for human health, have failed in most of our tests against the bacteria found in grocery meat.
And the lab found more than we expected.
"On three of the turkey samples, we found a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA – I mean, it's a bit shocked," Price said. "When they pass our skin, they can infect our blood, they can infect our hearts and kill us – at some point, probably still today, MRSA kills more people than HIV in the United States."
According to Price, the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is that it exists everywhere in conventional meat production, making the types of meat, brand names and stores irrelevant.
And the government is well aware of the problem.
Each year, the USDA tests thousands of pieces of grocery store meat looking for antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the National Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System, or NARMS. Data goes largely unnoticed by the public.
"The resistance is real. The resistance is here. The snow. We see it. It kills 23,000 Americans every year, "said Dawn Undurraga.
Undurraga analyzed more than 47,000 government laboratory tests on the presence of bacteria on supermarket meat on behalf of the Environmental Working Group. These data were used to identify trends and impacts on public health.
The latest report indicates that 75% of bacteria in grocery store meat are resistant to antibiotics, including 73% of salmonella on ground turkey. According to government testing, 71% of pork chops had antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Cooking the meat well will kill the bacteria. But Price says that bacteria usually spread far beyond the meat, from the grocery basket to the store to the kitchen.
"So, you open a chicken pack," said Price. "You have a contaminated package to treat, right?" So you open the trash, you've contaminated it, you're going to wash your hands, so open a faucet, you just contaminate it, you're going to pump soap, to contaminate, you wash your hands very well, you close the tap, you recontaminate your hands, go make a salad It is the ease with which it is possible to spread these bacteria in the kitchen. "
It is not disputed that antibiotic resistance is complicated. According to Price, four times more antibiotics are administered to livestock than humans, excessive prescription to the doctor contributes to the problem.
Medications, some of which no longer work, are all drugs on which medical science sustains to stop treatable infections before they become critical or even deadly.
"This is a serious threat to public health," Undurraga said. "If we do not do anything, we could enter a post-antibiotic era where things like a scratched knee or pneumonia could kill people again."
In conventional animal agriculture, very few regulations prevent the industry from over-using antibiotics, leaving individual companies to make critical decisions about public health. According to Price, the Obama administration has made significant progress in this area: it banned antibiotics only for animals to grow faster, but the industry has found alternatives.
"Our antibiotics, which have saved lives for years and decades, have been used only to accelerate the growth of animals," said Price. "But there is always this big loophole that allows food producers to feed animals with antibiotics to prevent disease." And that's a big enough loophole for 34 million pounds [of antibiotics to] cross. So they raise animals to make them sick, then they justify the antibiotics. "
"We are sending a message to the world saying that everything is fine," said Price. "And it'll come back to bite us."
Statement from the National Chicken Council:
"More than half of the chicken produced in the United States is now produced without antibiotics, and according to FDA guidelines, antibiotics are only used to treat and prevent livestock diseases, only on Order of a licensed veterinarian.For approved antibiotics, the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have in place extensive monitoring and testing programs to ensure that food is well consumed at home. The farm.The grocery store does not contain antibiotic residues.
According to the latest FDA report, the prevalence of Salmonella and Campylobacter in retail chicken meat samples continues to decline, and both are at their lowest level since the start of NARMS testing.
"Although we have collectively made considerable progress in reducing pathogens, the fact is that raw chicken is not sterile and that any raw agricultural product, that is, fruit , vegetables, fish, meat or poultry, is susceptible to naturally occurring bacteria, a sick person if mishandled or cooked.
"We all play an important role in the food security of our families, and people can take steps at home to significantly reduce the risk, for raw chicken it means washing your hands before and after contact, not contaminate other surfaces, cutting boards, knives, etc. and cooking the chicken to a minimum internal temperature of 165 ° F. Although bacteria can withstand certain antibiotics, they do not withstand the proper heat of cooking. 39, an oven or a grill. "
Statement from the Director of Regulatory and Scientific Affairs KatieRose McCullough, Ph.D., MPH at the North American Meat Institute:
"It is a fundamental fact of nature that raw agricultural products such as poultry contain bacteria and it is our job to reduce these bacteria to the lowest possible level. Data from the US Department of Agriculture show that our efforts to reduce bacteria are paying off, while data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that foodborne illness in humans is also declining.
Like humans, animals sometimes need antibiotics. They are administered under veterinary control to ensure their proper use. When antibiotics are administered, strict withdrawal periods are followed before the birds are processed into food. Used properly by expert veterinarians, antibiotics are very effective at destroying bacteria and ensuring the health of animals. But sometimes, some bacteria survive and become resistant to an antibiotic. The good news is that being resistant to a single antibiotic does not mean that a germ is resistant to all antibiotics.
Meat and poultry scientists are still working to develop the best possible strategies for targeting and destroying bacteria that can cause disease while preserving the effectiveness of antibiotics. Although no food-borne illness is acceptable, the fact is that Americans consume billions of servings of poultry each year and more than 99.99% of these servings are consumed safely. The public should follow good safe handling and cooking practices and be aware that poultry companies are committed to providing products that are as safe as possible. "
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