Retail Meat Surveillance in The State of Kansas As A Part of The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System

Project SummaryRetail Meat Surveillance in the State of Kansas as a Part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System As a key activity in combating antimicrobial resistance, the National AntimicrobialResistance Monitoring System (NARMS) conducts surveillance of resistance infoodborne pathogens and other enteric bacteria of food animals at the time of animalprocessing, in meat and poultry in retail, and in human foodborne infections. The retailfood surveillance is coordinated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in2015 included 14 of the U.S. mainland states. The goal of this project is to extend theretail food surveillance activities to Kansas, one of the major food animal producingstates of the nation. The enhanced retail food surveillance method used by the NARMSsince 2015 will be implemented in Kansas. Eighty meat and poultry products from retailstores in the state will be sampled monthly. To accurately reflect exposure of the state'spopulation to resistance in food, the sampling will be stratified to use randomly selectedstores in most, moderately and least populated areas, with the sampling intensity ineach area type proportional to percentage of the state's population residing there. Eachof the meat and poultry samples will be analyzed for presence of Salmonella spp.,Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus spp.; poultry samples also for Campylobacter spp.Epidemiological data about the production, origin, packaging, and retailing of the meatand poultry sampled will be collated and provided to the NARMS. The bacterial isolateswill be subjected by the FDA to tests for antimicrobial resistance and otherepidemiologically-relevant tests (e.g., Salmonella serotyping, Campylobacterspeciation). The results will be used by the NARMS to enhance resistance surveillanceand foodborne outbreak analysis at the national level. The results will also be returnedto Kansas where they will be integrated with data on human foodborne infections, tosupport analysis of foodborne outbreaks by the state public health authorities, and guidepublic health action. The results will be delivered to clinicians to inform antimicrobialstewardship in treating foodborne infections. The results will further be innovatively usedin the state to integrate data on resistance in the food animal populations, retail food,and humans. The integrated data will be analyzed to advance understanding ofresistance dynamics between the animals, food, and humans. This project willstrengthen surveillance and analysis of antimicrobial resistance, support foodborneoutbreak analysis, and thus promote public health in Kansas and nation-wide.