Safer?
Johns
Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
The
findings highlight the risk for consumers to contract foodborne illness --
contaminated animal products and produce sicken tens of millions of people in
the U.S. each year -- and the prevalence of multidrug-resistant organisms that,
when they lead to illness, can complicate treatment.
The
researchers found that, compared to conventionally processed meats,
organic-certified meats were 56 percent less likely to be contaminated with
multidrug-resistant bacteria. The study was based on nationwide testing of
meats from 2012 to 2017 as part of the U.S. National Antimicrobial Resistance
Monitoring System (NARMS).
In order for meat to be certified organic by the USDA, animals can never have been administered antibiotics or hormones, and animal feed and forage such as grass and hay must be 100 percent organic.
A longstanding concern about antibiotic use in livestock and livestock feed is the increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. To monitor this trend, in 1996 the federal government developed NARMS to track antibiotic resistance in bacteria isolated from retail meats, farmed animals, and patients with foodborne illness in the U.S.
For
their study, the Bloomberg School research team analyzed U.S. Food and Drug
Administration-NARMS data from randomly sampled chicken breast, ground beef,
ground turkey, and pork for any contamination and for contamination by
multidrug-resistant organisms. The analysis covers four types of bacteria:
Salmonella, Campylobacter, Enterococcus, and Escherichia coli.
The
study covered a total of 39,348 meat samples, of which 1,422 were found to be
contaminated with at least one multidrug-resistant organism. The rate of
contamination was 4 percent in the conventionally produced meat samples and
just under 1 percent in those that were produced organically.
The
study was published May 12 in Environmental Health Perspectives.
"The
presence of pathogenic bacteria is worrisome in and of itself, considering the
possible increased risk of contracting foodborne illness," says senior
author Meghan Davis, DVM, PhD, associate professor in the Department of
Environmental Health and Engineering at the Bloomberg School. "If
infections turn out to be multidrug resistant, they can be more deadly and more
costly to treat."
The analysis also suggested that the type of processing facility may influence the likelihood of meat contamination. Meat processors fall into three categories: exclusively organic, exclusively conventional, or those that handle both organic and conventional meats -- so-called "split" processors.
The
study found that among conventional meats, those processed at facilities that
exclusively handled conventional meats were contaminated with bacteria
one-third of the time, while those handled at facilities that processed both
conventional and organic meats were contaminated one-quarter of the time. The
prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacteria was roughly the same in these two
meat processor categories.
"The
required disinfection of equipment between processing batches of organic and
conventional meats may explain our findings of reduced bacterial contamination
on products from facilities that process both types of meats," says Davis.
The
authors believe their findings have relevance for regulatory agencies and
consumers. "How we raise animals matters," says Davis. "As a
veterinarian, I recognize that we sometimes need to use antibiotics to treat
sick animals, but taking advantage of opportunities to reduce antibiotics use
could benefit everyone. Consumer choice and regulatory oversight are two
strategies to do this."
