High bacteria levels found in meat at U.S. stores
April 16, 2011
A research was released on Friday that stated that meat stores in US have high level of bacteria. The grocery stores shelves mostly have these bacteria’s that are more than half of the bacteria resistant to multiple types of antibiotics.
Though the meat is safe but the customers should take precaution while handling and cooking the meat.
136 meat samples were checked from 26 different grocery stores in Illinois Florida, Arizona, Washington and California by the Translational Genomics Research Institute which is a nonprofit biomedical research group. The head of the study Dr. Lance Price, stated that high levels of Staphylococcus aureus (S.Aureus) bacteria were found in the meat.
“Staph causes hundreds of thousands of infections in the United States every year,” Price said in an interview. “It causes a whole slew of infections ranging from skin infections to really bad respiratory infections like pneumonia.”
The findings are already known to the Food and Drug Administration. The head of the research said that the most important finding is not the level of bacteria on the meats, but rather how the bacteria are becoming strongly resistant to antibiotics used to treat animals before slaughter.
“The bacteria is always going to be there. But the reason why they’re resistant is directly related to antibiotic use in food animal production,” Price said. “Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats to public health we face today.”
“This is one more reason to be very careful when you’re handling raw meat and poultry in the kitchen,” Price said. “You can cook away these bacteria. But the problem is when you bring in that raw product, you almost inevitably contaminate your kitchen with these bacteria.”
Posted by Angelia Kates · Filed Under Health news
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