Food safety is a serious issue here in the family oriented Syracuse community. People here place a lot of faith in their supermarkets such as Wegmans to make certain their food is fresh and safe, http://www.wegmans.com. And so a new report that much of the meat and poultry in our supermarkets is contaminated with dangerous bacteria is disturbing.
Medical Daily has reported "Nationwide study finds US meat and poultry is widely contaminated", http://bit.ly/fLQNCr. According to a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria which is linked to a wide range of human diseases, are present in meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates, http://bit.ly/euEw0K. The grocery stores here in Syracuse are as likely as any to have this problem of contamination of meat and poultry.
According to a study which has been published in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases nearly half of the meat and poultry samples, 47 percent, were contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those bacteria, 52 percent, were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics, http://bit.ly/houtsM. This means extreme caution must be taken when dealing with meat and poultry products here in Syracuse.
This has been the first national assessment of antibiotic resistant S. aureus in the U.S. food supply. DNA testing has suggested that the food animals themselves were the major source of contamination. Although proper cooking should kill staph it still could pose a risk to consumers through improper food handling and cross-contamination in the kitchen.
Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study and Director of TGen's Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health, has said "For the first time, we know how much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Staph, and it is substantial. The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today,"
The report has said that densely-stocked industrial farms, where food animals are steadily fed low doses of antibiotics, are good breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to humans. Dr Price has gone on to say "Antibiotics are the most important drugs that we have to treat Staph infections; but when Staph are resistant to three, four, five or even nine different antibiotics — like we saw in this study — that leaves physicians few options."
Dr Keim, a co-author of the paper has said "This study shows that much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with multidrug-resistant Staph. Now we need to determine what this means in terms of risk to the consumer." At this time the U.S. government routinely surveys retail meat and poultry for four types of drug-resistant bacteria, but S. aureus is not among them. This paper suggests that there should be a more comprehensive inspection program.
Therefore meat and poultry consumers here in Syracuse and elsewhere must be very careful. You should make certain your food is cooked well and clean your kitchen and yourself well after preparing food.
Photographer: Suat Eman
