A Nuanced Picture: Microbial Contamination at Conventional and Split Meat Processing Facilities
Authors: Nate Seltenrich
Journal: Environmental Health Perspectives (2021)

Meat products sold in U.S. stores are less likely to be contaminated with antimicrobial-resistant organisms if they were produced and processed according to Certified Organic standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.That conclusion, from the authors of a new paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, 1 is not surprising, given evidence from prior research. 2But according to the new study, the picture for conventionally produced meat is more nuanced.Antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi are a growing concern in the United States. 3In its first Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States report in 2013, 4 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimated that at least 2 million Americans acquire an antibiotic-resistant infection each year, and 23,000 of those people die.In 2019, the agency updated these figures to 2.8 million and 35,000, increases of 40% and 52%, respectively. 3or the new study, the authors looked at three categories of meat: conventionally produced meat processed at conventional facilities (conventional/conventional), conventionally produced meat processed at "split" facilities that handle both conventional and organic meat (conventional/split), and organically produced meat processed at split facilities (organic/split).They also considered organically produced meat processed at organic-only facilities but had data for only five samples.The authors found that conventional/split meat had significantly less overall bacterial contamination than conventional/ conventional meat.However, the likelihood of conventional/split meat being contaminated specifically with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) was similar to that of conventional/conventional meat.The research drew upon data from nearly 40,000 samples collected and tested between 2012 and 2017 by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS).Participants in this collaborative program include state and local public health departments, universities, the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 5ccording to the authors, this is the first large-scale, multistate U.S. study to investigate bacterial contamination of retail meats in association with both production and processing practices.The possibility that both production and processing may influence bacterial contamination levels of retail meats "opens up a whole series of possible research studies that you can conduct at any level of the farm-to-fork pathway to be able to better elucidate best practices," says senior author Meghan Davis, an associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.The equipment at split facilities is cleaned between organic and conventional batches to prevent commingling."[Based on our new results,] we hypothesize that cleaning between conventionally and organically produced meats may be a significant driver for the lower prevalence of overall bacteria," says first author Gabriel Innes, antimicrobial resistance surveillance coordinator with the New Jersey Department of Health.This additional cleaning step may not lower the prevalence of MDRO bacteria to the same extent, however, because of a possible colocation of antimicrobial resistance genes with disinfection resistance genes, Innes explains.In other words, the same germs that are genetically resistant to antimicrobial therapeutics may also be able to survive the cleaning agents used between conventional and organic batches of meat.Maurice Pitesky, an associate specialist in cooperative extension at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, supports further investigation of the hypothesis that disinfectant use at split processing facilities could affect the