More Research Required on Poultry Antibiotic Resistance

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Research conducted at the University of Arkansas revealed poultry products purchased from two local grocery stores contained varying levels of the pathogen Campylobacter jejuni that had developed a resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.

Researchers within the university’s System Division of Agriculture examined raw chicken carcasses purchased from two Fayetteville grocery stores each week for nearly a year. After examining 392 chicken carcasses, they found that 85 percent of the chicken purchased from one store had countable levels of Campylobacter, including non-pathogenic species, with 27 percent of it resistant to ciprofloxacin. At the second store, 46 percent of the carcasses had detectable levels of Campylobacter and 6 percent of them were resistant to the antibiotic.

Ramakrishna Nannapaneni, who conducted the research while at Arkansas as a food science post-doctoral associate, said ciprofloxacin has never been used in animals. However, it is closely related to two other antibiotics, enrofloxacin and sarafloxacin, which previously were approved for usage in poultry between 1995 and 2000 before they were banned on Sept. 12, 2005.

"When Campylobacter became resistant to enrofloxacin or sarafloxacin, it also showed cross-resistance to other fluoroquinolones (a group of antibiotics), such as in human medicine against ciprofloxacin," said Mr. Nannapaneni, now an assistant professor of food science at Mississippi State University.

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