“These results highlight the need for improvements in antibiotic stewardship in veterinary medicine”.
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According to Public Health England figures, previous year in England alone, E.coli was linked to the deaths of over 5,500 people.
Ruma chairman Gwyn Jones said: “Good kitchen hygiene, washing hands after handling raw meat and thorough cooking of meat will nearly completely prevent the transmission of antimicrobial resistance from meat to man”.
According to the British Poultry Council antibiotics have been in regular use in the chicken farming industry since the 1940s Deadly. “While some progress has been made we must not be complacent as it may take many years before we see significant reductions in the numbers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in farms”.
Dr Ron Daniels, CEO of the UK Sepsis Trust, said: “This study highlights a worrying trend towards rising resistance in E. coli on UK retail meat”.
People developing urinary tract infections may discover that the bug they have is resistant to a first-choice antibiotic, and by the time a suitable one is found the bug could be “out of control”, potentially leading to death.
The research found that 24% of samples contained ESBL E. coli, a strain of the bacteria resistant to the “critically important” modern cephalosporin antibiotics. It is believed that this rise is partly being driven by increasing resistance to key antibiotics in urinary-tract infections, which is resulting in more treatment failures and in some incidents the development of serious blood-poisoning infections.
The findings raise concerns about the quality of factory farming in the UK. In a statement, it said: ‘Animal welfare and food safety are priorities for our business.
The Bureau contacted the supermarkets involved but most declined to comment – adding it is an “industry-wide” problem. In response to the testing, the Alliance is calling for similar action from all United Kingdom supermarkets to tackle the use of antibiotics in their supply chains, by banning the routine preventative mass-medication of groups of animals, and dramatically curbing farm-use of the “critically important’ antibiotics”. Working with others across Government, and with food producers, we aim to reduce the use of antimicrobials in food production animals.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability policy at the British Retail Consortium, told ITV News that retailers have been “very clear” with customers and suppliers that antibiotics must be used responsibly.
This included 18 of 92 (20%) chicken-meat samples and 17 of 97 (18%) pork samples.
In total 97 (51%) meat samples were positive for trimethoprim-resistant E. coli.
Ampicillin used to be routinely used for treating human urinary-tract infections, but is no longer used because of high levels of resistance.
As a result, amoxicillin is often given in combination with clavulanic acid which helps combat the bacterial resistance.
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Just one chicken-meat sample was fully resistant to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, and one further chicken-meat sample showed intermediate-level resistance.
