MEAT IN U.S. WIDELY CONTAMINATED WITH RESISTANT BACTERIA: REPORT

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Meat in the U.S. may be widely contaminated with strains of drug-resistant bacteria, researchers have found.

Researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research center in Phoenix, Arizona, came to the conclusion after analyzing 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey from 80 brands, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

The samples came from 26 grocery stores in five cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Flagstaff, Arizona, and Washington, D.C., according to the report.

Nearly half of all meat and poultry sampled in the new study contained drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, the type of bacteria that most commonly causes staph infections, the report said.

Such infections can take many forms, from a minor rash to pneumonia or sepsis. But the findings are less about direct threats to humans than they are about the risks of using antibiotics in agriculture, indicating that antibiotics will become increasingly ineffective in humans, the report said.

About 47 percent of the samples contained S. aureus. Of those bacteria, 52 percent were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. DNA testing suggested the animals were the source of contamination.

"The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today," said Lance Price, lead author of the study said in a news release.

Antibiotics are routinely given to livestock to promote growth and prevent disease in crowded pens. Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration urged the meat industry to cut back on antibiotics use over concerns that the bacterial resistance bred in stockyards makes antibiotics less effective in humans, according to the report.

About 11,000 people die every year from S. aureus infections, and more than half of those deaths are from the hospital "superbug " methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), the report said, citing figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The direct risk to meat consumers -- a staph infection from the meat -- can be reduced by cooking meat thoroughly and washing all foods or surfaces that come in contact with raw meat, the report said.

The researchers reported their findings in the journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

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