NARMS Cooperative Agreement Program to Strengthen Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance in Retail Food Specimens

PAR-20-124, NARMS Cooperative Agreement Program toStrengthen Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance in Retail Food Specimens (U01) MD Department of Health, 2020ABSTRACTFoodborne bacterial infections have contributed to morbidity and mortality world-wide. To trackantimicrobial resistance in enteric bacteria isolated from retails meat products, NationalAntimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) was established to perform publichealth surveillance in the United States. The Maryland Department of Health (MDH) has been apartner with the NARMS program for numbers of years and has been successfully contributingto the data development used in the bacterial illness and antimicrobial resistance studies. AtMDH, the project has been performed in collaboration between MDH epidemiologists and MDHlaboratory scientists to assure the quality of the data. Retail meats including ground beef, groundturkey, pork, chicken and seafoods are purchased from stores across the State of Maryland andprocessed according to the protocols established by the NARMS program. The target organismsfrom the retail meats include Salmonella, E. coli and Enterococci and Campylobacter whereasVibrio, Aeromonas, Enterococcus and lactose fermenting bacteria are isolated from seafoodproducts. The isolate identification is confirmed with appropriate methods before submitted tothe FDA. Isolates including E. coli, Campylobacter and Salmonella are subjected to wholegenome sequencing and the data are submitted to the FDA. After all isolates are confirmed andfrozen, they are shipped to the FDA for antibiotic susceptibility testing and furthercharacterization.