Do MRSA Illnesses have a food connection? Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - MRSA - found in Canadian Pigs, Farms, and Farmers
According to All Headline News, a new study published in Veterinary Microbiology found MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is surprisingly common in Canadian pigs, farms and pig farmers, signaling that animal agriculture may be a source of the deadly bacteria. The Veterinary Microbiology study (Khanna et al. Veterinary Medicine 2007) is the first to show that North American pig farms and farmers commonly carry MRSA.
Researchers looked for MRSA on twenty Ontario farms, in 285 pigs. They found MRSA at forty-five percent of farms (9/20) and in nearly one in four pigs (71/285). One in five pig farmers studied (5/25) also were found to carry MRSA, a much higher rate than in the general North American population. The strains of MRSA bacteria found in Ontario pigs and pig farmers included a strain common to human MRSA infections in Canada.
A study published in the October, 2007 issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) (Klevens et al: Invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections in the United States JAMA 2007; 298: 1753-1771) estimated almost 100,000 MRSA infections in 2005, and nearly 19,000 deaths in the United States. In comparison, HIV/AIDS killed 17.000 people that year.
Researchers generally believed MRSA was an opportunistic infection occurring mainly in hospitals. However more information is coming to light that finds even healthy people are developing MRSA infections and pig farms may be a possible culprit. Some experts in the in the agricultural, medical, and environmental industries are calling for Congress to compel the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to study whether the use of human antibiotics in animal agriculture is contributing to the reported surge in MRSA infections and deaths in the United States.
"Identifying and controlling community sources of MRSA is a public health priority of the 1st order," said Richard Wood, Executive Director of Food Animal Concerns Trust and Steering Committee Chair of Keep Antibiotics Working. "Are livestock farmers and farms in the United States also sources? We don't know for sure, because the US government is not systematically testing US livestock for MRSA."
