Antibiotic-resistant infections from foodborne germs are increasing, with public health officials sounding the alarm over the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.
Infections from a common type of salmonella resistant to four antibiotics rose from 18 percent of the germs in 2011 to 46 percent in 2013, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Tuesday.
The increase in illnesses was linked to eating pork or beef, including meats purchased from live animal markets.
The report outlined which types of antibiotic-resistant infections have increased or decreased in 2013, the latest year of data available. Researchers looked at more than 5,000 germs from sick people for antibiotic resistance and compared it with previous years’ data.
Each year antibiotic-resistant infections from foodborne germs cause an estimated 440,000 illnesses in the U.S., the agency said.
The good news is that multi-drug resistance, which is resistance to three or more antibiotics, stayed steady in salmonella. It remained at 10 percent of infections in 2013 compared with 2011.
The report also looked at antibiotic-resistant infections from the intestinal disease shigella. The report found that 26 percent of 344 shigella infections were resistant to at least the antibiotics ampicillin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.
In addition, 184 of the 344 infections were resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics.
The CDC has been sounding the alarm over antibiotic resistance for years and points to meat consumption as a likely contributor.
Farmers can overuse antibiotics to make livestock bigger or more resistant to disease. That in turn creates antibiotic-resistant microbes, which are passed on to humans when meat or poultry is consumed.
Another key contributor is doctors prescribing too many antibiotics, even when they aren’t necessary.
Bowing to public pressure, several food producers have worked to curb antibiotic use in their livestock. Major chicken producers such as Fosters Farms, Tysons and Perdue have agreed to scale back antibiotic use to only when animals are sick.
Underscoring the global impact of the problem, leaders from the Group of Seven industrialized nations who met this week agreed to share national action plans on combating antibiotic resistance.
Combating resistance must be addressed through conserving the use of antibiotics and “engaging in research and development for new antimicrobials,” reads a statement from the White House.
