Researchers in Flagstaff are looking at what happens when farmers routinely feed antibiotics to the beef, chicken, pork, turkey, shrimp and salmon you might find at the local grocery store.
They’re buying meat and seafood from grocery stores here and in Los Angeles, Florida, Chicago, and the District of Columbia, to investigate what kinds of bacteria live on it.
If past testing for different bacteria is any indication, they could find some ugly stuff: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting you by kitchen cross-contamination, even if you’re a vegetarian living with omnivores.
“We think that it is contributing significantly to the antibiotic resistance problem in people,” said Lance B. Price, a biologist and director of a Translational Genomics (TGen) North unit that does research bearing on human health and the organisms living on us.
Animals in many commercial feeding operations in the United States — Europe, including the world’s top pork producer, Denmark, has banned the practice — feed their animals antibiotics routinely when they are well, sometimes mixed with food, to help them grow faster and remain healthy in crowded conditions.
“In industrial food animal production, one of their standard tools is to use antibiotics,” Price said.
