| dc.description.abstract | Food serves as an important fomite for transmission of disease-causing and antibiotic resistant
bacteria to humans. Because this may be an especially challenging problem in low-income countries,
the level of microbial surface contamination and abundance of antibiotic resistant Escherichia coli on
beef carcasses were estimated. Out of 125 surface swab samples (plated on MacConkey agar), 70 to
100% were positive to Gram-negative bacteria and E. coli, respectively. More than 50% of individual
carcasses had bacterial loads below the maximum threshold recommended by the FAO. For carcasses
in small- and medium-scale facilities, the average load of bacteria ranged between 0.8 and 1.5 log
cfu/cm2, while carcasses in the large slaughter facility had an average loads of between 1.77 and 1.42
log cfu/cm2. Of the 1,272 E. coli isolates tested, 49.4% were resistant to at least one antibiotic. Isolates
were frequently resistant to tetracycline (21.7%) and ampicillin (19.2%) while the frequency of resistance
to the remaining nine antibiotics was <3%. In addition, 5.3% of isolates were multidrug resistant with 18
different phenotypes. The combination of resistance to ampicillin and tetracycline was the most
common. Although, poor sanitation practices were observed, results reflect lower bacterial counts and
limited prevalence of antibiotic resistant E. coli relative to other reports in the literature. | en_US |
