NARMS Integrated Report: 2012-2013

August 19, 2015 — 

This report summarizes the major findings of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) for calendar years 2012 and 2013. The most important resistance findings for Salmonella, Campylobacter, Escherichia coli and Enterococcus are highlighted.

Salmonella and Campylobacter are the leading bacterial causes of foodborne illness. Isolates from human laboratory-confirmed clinical cases are tested and compared with bacteria derived from various stages in the food production chain. Intestinal (cecal) samples are collected at slaughter from eight animal production classes (broiler chickens, turkeys, dairy cattle, beef cattle, steers, heifers, market hogs and sows) along with isolates from the processing line recovered from chicken rinses, turkey carcass swabs and ground product of chicken, turkey, and beef. This is coupled with Salmonella and Campylobacter from four retail meat products (chicken, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops) purchased at retail outlets in 14 states on a monthly basis.

E. coli and Enterococcus from the animal and meat samples are also tested. These are used as indicator organisms for testing of resistance to antimicrobials that are active against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, respectively. Antimicrobial resistance data are generated using the same methods and analyzed in an integrated way to measure the dissemination of resistant bacteria and resistance genes through the food supply.

In this report we focus on antimicrobial resistance to drug classes that are most important to human medicine (generally, first or second line treatments), multidrug resistance and specific co-resistance patterns that have been linked to severe illness in humans.

Further details on resistance to antimicrobials not included in this summary can be found in the data tables and in the interactive graphs.