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There is continued concern about the use of antibiotics as growth promoting agents in food animals and the potential for development of antibiotic resistance in human pathogens. The long term goal of this study is to understand the processes involved in the development and spread of resistance in gram positive bacterial flora of poultry.
This study will collect microflora samples from commercial poultry farms and processing/slaughter plants for one year. The farms will have one house using growth promoting antibiotics throughout the flocks' life and one house with no antibiotics used. Comparisons of drug resistance genes and plasmids will be made between poultry gram-positive commensals and human enterococci. The human samples will be obtained from the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System.