National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) retail food surveillance in selected urban areas of northern California.

Project SummaryThe National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) is a national surveillancesystem that monitors the susceptibility of enteric bacteria to medically relevant antimicrobialsin order to help assess the impact of veterinary antimicrobial use on human health. The NARMSRetail Food Surveillance Program, a collaborative project between the Food and DrugAdministration Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA/CMV), the CDC, and state and local healthdepartments, supports this mission by improving detection of and surveillance for antimicrobialresistance among enteric bacteria in raw retail meat commodities. To achieve this goal, wepropose to purchase and test raw meat, poultry, and seafood from randomly sampled retailmarkets in San Francisco and San Jose, California. Raw meat will be delivered to the ContraCosta Public Health Laboratory (CCPHL) where microbiologists will attempt to isolateSalmonella from all meat samples; Campylobacter from poultry samples only; andEnterococcus, Aeromonas, Vibrio and other lactose positive bacteria from seafood samples. Allisolates will be forwarded to FDA/CMV for antibiotic resistance testing. For each productpurchased, we will record the store name and location, brand name, sell-by date, purchasedate, packaging type, and the country of origin, when available. In addition to monitoring theprevalence of bacteria and trends in antimicrobial resistance in raw meat, these data are vitalto foodborne outbreak investigations and help to inform parameters for antimicrobial use inveterinary medicine. These data will be shared with relevant partners and can be used by publichealth professionals to promote interventions to reduce resistance among foodborne bacteria.