Antibiotic-resistant germs flourish on meat products in US grocery stores.

Testing of grocery-store meat and poultry is showing an alarmingly high prevalence of MRSA and other antibiotic resistant bacteria.   

Drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, can cause deadly skin infections that can also spread to heart, lungs, blood, or bone. Nationwide tests by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) confirmed 47% of meat and poultry samples were contaminated with S. aureus, of which over half were resistant to a variety of antibiotics.  In another recent study, the largest sampling of raw meat products to date indicated that the superbug MRSA, (methicillin resistant S. aureus) is found in 7% of store-bought pork. Link to Science Daily report here.

These dangerous superbugs are being created by the liberal use of antibiotics by industrial farms to increase growth rates.  The deadly germs are then spread by handling practices at the plants.  According to a report  from the Union of Concerned Scientists, an estimated 70% of U.S. antibiotics are used  for non-medical uses by farm industries, primarily for growth enhancement. Densely-packed concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are the breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that move from animals to to grocery store meat counters.

DNA testing has proven that the food animals themselves are a major source of contamination.  However, the meat handling plants are also a source of contamination, as the meat sampling study of pork  showed no significant difference in MRSA contamination between pork raised with or without antibiotics.

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