Enhancing Capability and Capacity of Maryland's Laboratory to Conduct Surveillance of Antibiotic Resistance Pathogens in Selected Retail Foods

AbstractFood-borne bacterial infections contribute to morbidity and mortality world-wide. The NationalAntimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) was established to perform publichealth surveillance in the United States to track antimicrobial resistance in enteric bacteriaisolated from retails food products. The MD Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has beenparticipating in the NARMS program for numbers of years and successfully contributed to thedevelopment of the data used in the studies of bacterial illness to retail food contamination. Thestudy has been performed in collaboration between the State of Maryland DHMHepidemiologists and laboratory scientists to assure the quality of the results. Retail foodsincluding ground beef, pork chops, ground turkey and chicken breast with skin, are purchased bythe MD DHMH staff from stores the Baltimore metropolitan areas every two weeks. Thesamples are processed according to the protocols for the presence of Salmonella, E. coli andEnterococci. The poultry samples are also tested for the presence of Campylobacter. Bacterialisolate's identity are then confirmed with the appropriate methods. Additionally, we are capableof serotyping Salmonella isolates and speciating the other isolates using molecular methods.After all isolates are confirmed and frozen at -80?C, they are submitted to the FDA for antibioticsusceptibility testing and further characterization.