US meat and poultry is widely contaminated

“Drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases, are present in meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates, according to a nationwide study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

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, according to the study published today in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.”

To specify, they are mostly infected with what would give you staph infection, aka food poisoning.

Still very bad, but we're not talking about people dying. Although if half of America suddenly got food poisoning we may be bucked anyways.

um... it's less the food poisoning itself, and more the drug resistant bacteria you want to worry about there...

It's a good thing I eat all my meat well-done.

Haven't gotten food poisoning yet, here's to hoping it stays that way...

I expect Western media to go crazy about this story.... Not!

zachandhobbes Wrote:To specify, they are mostly infected with what would give you staph infection, aka food poisoning.

Still very bad, but we're not talking about people dying. Although if half of America suddenly got food poisoning we may be bucked anyways.

"S. aureus can cause a range of illnesses from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia, endocarditis and sepsis."

Of course, it's not that common with the more grave symptoms and most of the bacteria just die off during cooking, though

"it may still pose a risk to consumers through improper food handling and cross-contamination in the kitchen."

The biggest worry about this is really how common these drugresistant bacteria are. Not that this is a surprise at all since everyone knew that livestock handling as it is commonly done in the modern US (and, although to a lesser extent, in many other areas) was going to lead to this very problem sooner or later. Everyone knew it was stupid and not viable as a long-term solution and this was pointed out many times. They still did it though because hey who really cares about the long-term.

Most people are covered in Staph aureus at many times in their life anyway, it doesn't usually cause disease in otherwise healthy people. It's a problem for people who are already immunocompromised, especially in hospitals.

The interesting part is the antibiotic resistance, not that the bacteria are there in the first place. Still, it's not really a problem. Microbiologists have known for 60 years that we would need to rotate the antibiotics we use and supplement with other approaches. Antibiotics are overused in farming, but we have a whole shedload of other tools in the pipeline and many more classes of antibiotics already perfected.

Remember to cook meat before eating it

The problem is that there was not enough research done on new antibiotics and it could soon be the case that we have bacteria that we just can't kill.

Things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin-...cus_aureus (VISA) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensively...berculosis (drug resistant TB)

I can haz cheezburger?

Blahah Wrote:Most people are covered in Staph aureus at many times in their life anyway, it doesn't usually cause disease in otherwise healthy people. It's a problem for people who are already immunocompromised, especially in hospitals.

Good point except that one thing they are finding is that it is not immunosuppression that activates staph infection in hospitals but doctors (and other health care providers) not doing simple things like washing their hands before surgery and visiting patients:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=doctors%...sh%20hands

It's a huge problem of how to get doctors (in the US) to follow simple and basic protocol.

The finding came about because staph is on everyone, and yet only people in hospitals (and under care for injuries outside hospitals) were getting sick. If it was about immunosuppression, the non-hospitalized immunosuppressed should be getting more infections than the healthy but injured, and rather than the sick getting sicker (immunosuppressed getting staph), the healthy who had glancing involvement with medical care in injury care were getting sick. It's why athletes (and not old people) get staph infections: they are very healthy, but their physical therapists don't wash their hands and equipment between patients. For maximum horror stories, google for the state of sanitation of OB/GYN equipment used male (and, not surprisingly, not female) OB/GYN. Years of accumulated crust from failing to even rinse off sepeculums, let alone soak in alcohol, or clean in an autoclave.

The scene in "Minority Report" where the doctor is blowing his nose and his hands while performing surgery, saying "I will pump you so full of antibiotics I could sew a dead cat in you and you would not get sick" unfortunately represents the (apparently largely American) mindset that technology trumps proper procedure. When studying doctors in say, India, who do not have access to the technology or the expensive drugs, basic protocols carefully followed making more effective care than the more technologically advanced US care where doctors do not follow procedure and expect technology to make the difference.

My papa is an MD professor at medical school, ashamed of all these facts and trying to change them, so this is not a crackpot idea, or founded in some anti Western medicine bias, (except as far as the research has specifically impugned American doctors habits.)

Some related news on Slashdot today:

Slashdot Wrote:"Medical groups from the American Medical Association to the American Society of Microbiology have appealed to the government and industry for years to restrict the practice of providing sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics for livestock, lest critical antibiotics become useless for human treatments. Now Tom Laskawy reports that a coalition of environmental groups has decided to sue the Federal Drug Administration to follow its own safety findings and withdraw approval for most non-therapeutic uses of penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed to healthy livestock when it's not medically necessary. 'While this may cause eyerolls among some who look at this as "just another lawsuit," there's something very important going on with the courts and contested science right now,' writes Laskawy. 'As it happens, one of the main roles of a judge is as "finder of fact." In practice, this means that judges determine whether scientific evidence is compelling enough to force government action."'"