Food safetyDrug resistant salmonella found in recalled turkey burgers
Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that investigators have determined that ground Jennie-O turkey burgers have been contaminated with a drug resistant strain of Salmonella; the infection from the contaminated burgers was first detected on 27 December 2010 and has infected twelve people in ten states; a recall has been issued for nearly twenty-seven tons of the infected burgers; the Hadar strain of Salmonella, is resistant to most antibiotics complicating treatment options and increasing the chances of hospitalization; CDC investigators say they are still examining the case and may issue further recalls on raw turkey products
Turkey burgers recalled for Salmonella contamination // Source: topnews.ae
Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that investigators have determined that ground Jennie -O turkey burgers have been contaminated with a drug resistant strain of Salmonella.
The infection from the contaminated burgers was first detected on 27 December 2010 and has infected twelve people in ten states across the United States including California, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
On Saturday, 1 April the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued an emergency recall on all Jennie-O brand turkey burgers. The burgers were sold exclusively to Sam’s Club stores and have a use-by date of 23 December 2011.
More than twenty-seven tons of the infected turkey burgers were sold nationwide.
According to the CDC, the bacteria, the Hadar strain of Salmonella, is resistant to most antibiotics including ampicillin, amoxicillin, and tetracycline. This drug resistance complicates treatment options and increases the chances of hospitalization.
So far three patients have been hospitalized, but no deaths have been reported.
CDC investigators say they are still examining the case and may issue further recalls on raw turkey products. In the meantime, CDC is urging consumers to take extra precautions when cooking and serving poultry.
Dr. Martin Wiedmann, an associate professor at the Department of Food Science at Cornell University, said that the recent outbreak highlights the need to strengthen public health infrastructure to detect these drug-resistant outbreaks.
“Multidrug-resistant strains are out there, and we know they continue to cause outbreaks. A concern is if we don’t have the lab capacity to detect them, patients won’t get the treatment that they need,” he said.
From the time the first infection was detected, it took nearly four months to identify the outbreak, the source of infection, and to issue a recall.
Wiedmann also warned, “All types of ground meat have the potential to have some of these pathogens, so it’s critical that there is appropriate handling in consumers’ homes.”
In the past several years, instances of food borne drug-resistant bacterial infections have been on the rise.
In 2007 thirty-eight people in four states were sickened by another drug-resistant strain of Salmonella found in ground beef. While in 2006 and 2007, the same strain of resistant Salmonella infected eighty-five people after they ingested contaminated Mexican-style aged cheese.
To help stem the tide of the increasing numbers of drug-resistant infections from food, some experts have been advocating for reducing the use of antibiotics in farm animals.
Studies have linked that constantly administering low doses of antibiotics have led to the development of dangerous drug resistant strains of bacteria that can be deadly to humans.
In 2010 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a series of guidelines that suggest limiting the use antibiotics in cattle, poultry, and pigs to only when they are sick.
Currently many farms use large quantities of antibiotics to help increase size, feed efficiency, and reduce the chance of infection when animals are kept in close quarters.
