FLICKR, RIKKISREFUGE
Modern agriculture relies on antibiotics to shield livestock from disease, but widespread over-use of antibiotics has raised concerns over creating highly resistant “superbugs.” Researchers announced this week (December 5) that bacteria carrying a rare, dangerous gene for antibiotic resistance have been found in agricultural animals for the first time.
In a study published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, researchers took swabs and fecal samples from a pig farm and discovered bacteria resistant to carbapenems, an important class of antibiotics. However, the resistant bacteria were found in only a few samples and were not detected in pigs that were being fattened for slaughter.
“There is no evidence the pigs carried the gene into the [human] food supply,” Thomas Wittum of Ohio State University, a coauthor on ...
