A Closer Look At The FDA Antibiotic Retail Meat Report
This article from Supermarket News discusses the 2011 Retail Meat Report from the Food and Drug Administration, released in early 2013. Salmonella that is resistant to at least one of the three major antibiotic drug groups is present in a significant percentage of poultry and beef. Farmers have not responded to the FDA’s 2010 request to voluntarily reduce the use of antibiotics, instead increasing their antibiotic purchases in 2011.
[Abstract excerpted from original source.]
“The Food and Drug Administration’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System puts out a yearly report looking at the rates of antibiotic resistance of foodborne pathogens in retail meat and poultry samples. A thorough examination, the Retail Meat Report is hefty chunk of research to wade through. I asked Patrick McDermott, director of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System at the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, how he would characterize the rate of antibiotic resistance in the 2011 report compared to what was found in previous years’ reports. The answer to that isn’t neat and tidy, he explained. It depends, he said, on factors like what drug is being used and the food animal source.”
“In 2010, FDA asked food producers to voluntarily move to “judicious use” of antibiotics in livestock, only when necessary. In the third annual report, FDA recorded that 30.3 million pounds of antibiotics were sold for use in domestic or exported food livestock. This is a 2.1% increase from the 2010 report, by my calculations.”