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

Project Summary
The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) is a national surveillance
system that monitors the susceptibility of enteric bacteria to medically relevant antimicrobials
in order to help assess the impact of veterinary antimicrobial use on human health. The NARMS
Retail Food Surveillance Program, a collaborative project between the Food and Drug
Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA/CMV), the CDC, and state and local health
departments, supports this mission by improving detection of and surveillance for antimicrobial
resistance among enteric bacteria in raw retail meat commodities. To achieve this goal, we
propose to purchase and test raw meat, poultry, and seafood from randomly sampled retail
markets in San Francisco and San Jose, California. Raw meat will be delivered to the Contra
Costa Public Health Laboratory (CCPHL) where microbiologists will attempt to isolate
Salmonella from all meat samples; Campylobacter from poultry samples only; and
Enterococcus, Aeromonas, Vibrio and other lactose positive bacteria from seafood samples. All
isolates will be forwarded to FDA/CMV for antibiotic resistance testing. For each product
purchased, we will record the store name and location, brand name, sell-by date, purchase
date, packaging type, and the country of origin, when available. In addition to monitoring the
prevalence of bacteria and trends in antimicrobial resistance in raw meat, these data are vital
to foodborne outbreak investigations and help to inform parameters for antimicrobial use in
veterinary medicine. These data will be shared with relevant partners and can be used by public
health professionals to promote interventions to reduce resistance among foodborne bacteria.