A recent U.S.-based study describes the risk of multidrug-resistant (MDR) foodborne pathogen contamination of retail meats associated with the processor region of origin and shipping distance to the final destination. In general, increased distance was associated with increased MDR bacterial contamination.
The researchers pulled data for meat samples from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), which publicizes antimicrobial susceptibility information for pathogenic and indicator bacteria isolated from retail chicken breasts, ground turkey, ground beef, and pork chops purchased at grocery stores in participating states. Only the years 2012–2014 contained relevant data to analyze geospatial risk factors that overlapped with the publicly available NARMS dataset. Then, the researchers contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) to collect information from the agency’s Meat, Poultry, and Egg Product Inspection (MPI) Directory, which enabled the researchers to aggregate processors from the NARMS database into Midwest, Northeast, South, and West regions.