- In a new study, researchers say they found drug-resistant bacteria in 40% of meat samples gathered at supermarkets in Spain.
- The findings are amplifying concerns about food-borne illness and the overuse of antibiotic drugs.
- Experts say you can lower the risk of food-borne illness by properly storing meat at cold temperatures and cooking it thoroughly.
E. coli bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics was found in 40% of meat samples gathered at supermarkets in Spain.
Also highly prevalent in the samples were strains of E. coli known to cause severe illness, according to research presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The findings, which haven’t been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal, are amplifying concerns about food-borne illness and the overuse of antibiotic drugs.
“Most consumers assume that everything they buy from a grocery store is guaranteed to be safe, but this is far from the truth,” Tyler Williams, the chief technical officer of ASI Food Safety, one of the largest food safety service providers in North America, told Medical News Today.
Infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria kill an estimated
That number projected to reach 10 million by 2050 if current trends continue, according to the World Health Organization.
“Until we as a world agree on the best practices in slaughter and animal rendering it is likely to continue to be a problem and get worse,” Trevor Craig, a food safety expert and corporate director of technical training and consulting at Microbac Laboratories, told Medical News Today.
Researchers led by Dr. Azucena Mora Gutiérrez and Dr. Vanesa García Menéndez of the University of Santiago de Compostela-Lugo in Lugo, Spain, tested 100 meat products, including chicken, turkey, beef and pork, selected at random from supermarkets in Oviedo, Spain.
They found that while 73% of the supermarket meat contained levels of E. coli…
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