Half of meat contaminated by life-threatening bacteria
Nearly half of all meat and poultry sold in stores is contaminated by life-threatening bacteria. Staph infections – that are resistant to antibiotics – have been found in 47 per cent of meat samples bought in stores across the US, and similar levels are likely to be found in the UK, where the same intensive farming methods are used.
The bacteria – which can cause life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia and sepsis – were the result of intensive farming methods, which includes the feeding of low doses of antibiotics to livestock.
The research team, from the Translational Genomics Research Institute, bought 136 meat samples from 26 stores in five US cities. Of these, 47 per cent were contaminated with S. aureus bacteria, and more than half of the bacteria found are resistant to antibiotics.
(Source: Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2011; 52: 1227-30).