The US Food and Drug Administration has released the 2011 NARMS (National Antimicrobial Resistances Monitoring System) executive report. It’s a good-news/bad-news outcome, which may be as good as can be expected, but at least there’s some good news.
Here are some areas that were highlighted by the FDA.
A local county newspaper had a front page headline about a zoning amendment that was approved to allow for a feeder rodent facility that will produce about 10 000 rodents a week (I know, apparently there aren’t a lot of big things happen around here). Co-incidentally, a couple days later, I received an alert and
Antibiotic use in animals, and the impact on humans is a controversial area. At a conference a few years ago, one of the organizers posed the question, "What percentage of resistance in human pathogens is attributable to antibiotic use in animals?" They had people write their answers on cards, and later in the
The title from Food Safety News‘ latest report says it all: "After eight expansions, how big is the Diamond Pet Foods Recall?" It’s disturbing that we can’t answer that question, considering the contamination stretches back to 2011 and now it’s apparent that there are problems with another one of their plants.
Accordingly
While it shouldn’t come as a surprise considering other studies, a recent study in PLoS One (O’Brien et al 2012) has caused a bit of a stir in the US. This study, headed up by Dr. Tara Smith’s research group in Iowa, looked for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in retail pork. They bought
When it comes to public health concerns about staphylococcal bacteria from pets, most of the attention gets paid to methicillin-resistant strains like MRSA. That’s not surprising considering how important MRSA is in human medicine. However, staph that aren’t methicillin-resistant can also be a problem, since they can cause the same types of infections that resistant
