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Posted to uk.business.agriculture,alt.food.vegan,alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,rec.food.veg,uk.environment.conservation,uk.rec.birdwatching,uk.rec.gardening,uk.current-events.bird-flu
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MRSA found widespread in Canadian supermarket pork
On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:47:18 -0000, "Pat Gardiner"
> wrote: >Pat's Notes; Frankly, I don't have anything to say, except that Defra's vets >are dragging Britain into a total disaster. The Politburo won't look too >good either. > >I wondered why there was frantic activity recently in Britain. They knew >this was coming obviously. > >I think the government now has an absolute duty to put the police into Defra >immediately. The vets have refused, in effect, to test British pigs and pork >for MRSA. If they continue to defy their Minister, they must be sacked and >EU vets brought in. > >The reason is, of course, the covered-up PMWS epidemic in 1999. There was >widespread criminal activity by veterinary civil servants, including the >intimidation of witnesses to Parliamentary select committee, falsification >of documents, employment of former senior SAS officers....you name it, they >did it. > >There is no point in going after me again. Everything needed, bar a few >shortcuts,for prosecutions has long been in the public domain. MRSA in pigs >is linked to PMWS and other circoviruses. > >Pretty well all the facts have long been published and archived here on >uk.business.agriculture. The remainder can be obtained from OLAF, the >serious fraud squad of the EU and questioning of the maybe 20 SVS vets >directly involved. > >http://03530.com/2008/03/19/canadian...-products.html > >TORONTO - Canadian researchers have found antibiotic-resistant Staph >bacteria in pork products purchased in retail stores across the country - a >discovery that raises questions about how the contamination occurred, how >frequently it happens and whether it has implications for human health. > >Just under 10 per cent of sampled pork chops and ground pork recently >purchased in four provinces tested positive for methicillin-resistant >Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, lead researcher Dr. Scott Weese reported >Wednesday in a presentation to the International Conference on Emerging >Infectious Diseases in Atlanta. > >The bacteria would be destroyed by proper cooking, so Staph food poisoning >is not a major concern, said Weese, an expert on zoonoses, the pathogens >that pass back and forth between people and animals. > >But he wondered whether people handling meat with MRSA on its surface would >end up inadvertently "colonizing" themselves. People who carry the bacteria >on their skin or in their nostrils are at greater risk of going on to >develop a Staph infection, which can range from a hard-to-heal boil to >pneumonia to a potentially deadly bloodstream infection. > >"My main concern is: if there's MRSA on the surface of a pork chop and >someone's handling it and then they touch their nose, could they transmit it >from the pork chop to their nose?" noted Weese, a veterinarian based at the >Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. > >"If they do what they're supposed to do in terms of meat handling, then it >should be perfectly safe. But do people do that is the question?" > >Where MRSA infections were once mainly acquired in hospital, in recent years >increasing rates of infections have been recorded in people who haven't been >in hospitals and haven't been taking antibiotics. > >The startling rise in so-called community acquired MRSA infections in the >United States - a trend which is now being seen in parts of Canada - has led >scientists to look for ways to explain the changing pattern of infections. > >But Weese said it is too soon to conclude that MRSA in meat might be playing >a role. "It's way too early to say that it does. But we have to look at >whether it does." > >"Basically my take-home message is I'm not going to stop eating pork because >of this," he said. "I'm going to keep washing my hands and pay attention to >how I handle it. And that's all I think I need to do." > >This is the first confirmed report of MRSA in retail meat in North America >and one of fewer than a handful of such reported findings in the world. > >A group of Dutch researchers reported last fall that they had isolated MRSA >from two pork samples in the Netherlands. And Japanese scientists reported >in 2007 that they had found MRSA in two samples of raw chicken. > >Weese's team decided to look for MRSA in pork meat after finding the >superbug in Ontario pigs, work that was reported last November in the >journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. > >He admitted they currently don't know how much significance to place on the >presence of the bacteria on the meat. Nor do the testing methods they used >allow them to say if the meat was teeming with MRSA, or simply carrying >small amounts of the bacteria. > >In an interview, he described the research as a step-wise process. > >"Step 1 is: Is it in pigs? Step 2: Yes, it's in food. Step 3: . How much is >there? Is it one organism or is it a billion?" > >"The techniques we use are fairly sensitive and they don't quantify. It's a >Yes-No (answer)," he explained. > >"Now we need to refine that and say: OK, how much is there? Where is it? And >in the broad scheme where did it come from and does it actually cause a >problem?" > >The meat was purchased through the Canadian Integrated Program for >Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance, a Public Health Agency of Canada >program that looks for antibiotic resistant bacteria in food and food >animals. > >To date Weese's team has tested 212 meat samples bought in four different >provinces. Most were pork chops but the group also tested a few pork >shoulder roasts and some ground pork. > >None of the pork roasts carried the bacteria but an equal percentage of pork >chops and ground pork did. The rates of positive MRSA tests ranged from zero >per cent in one province to 33 per cent in another. Weese didn't want to >name the provinces. > >Molecular analysis of about half of the isolated bacteria show a mix of >strains. Some could not be typed, which suggests they are probably MRSA >strains known to infect pigs, Weese said. But of those strains that could be >typed, some were of a common human strain while others were of a type known >to infect both horses and humans. |
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