Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate prevalence and antimicrobial resistance of bacteria from retail meats in Korea during the year 2016.
Methods: We collected the retail meats in grocery stores periodically and conducted isolation of bacteria from the samples. With the isolates, we performed antimicrobial susceptibility testing using MIC, identification of antimicrobial resistance genes using PCR and MLST for the homology analysis.
Results: From the total 200 cases domestic food products, 88 E. coli, 34 S. aureus, 29 Enterococcus spp., and one Salmonella spp. were isolated. 200 imported samples were analyzed and 48 E. coli, 19 S. aureus and 3 Enterococcus spp. were isolated. E. coli from domestic primary products shoed higher resistance to tetracycline, nalidixic acid, ampicillin and streptomycin than the other antimicrobials, while for imported products streptomycin, tetracycline, ampicillin resistance was relatively higher. In case of S. aureus penicillin resistance was highest in both domestic products and imported products. In case of Enterococcus spp. resistances were rare except for daptomycin, tetracycline, quinuprostin/ dalfopristin. One Salmonella spp. showed resistance to only streptomycin. Two MRSA strains were isolated from domestic chicken meats. 6 ESBL producing E. coli were isolated from three domestic chicken meats and three imported chicken meats. By MLST analysis, two MRSA strains from chicken meats were determined as ST692 and that was similar to previous study in Korea. six ESBL ST types were ST23, 457, 602 from three domestic chicken meats and ST58, 117, 1286 from three imported chicken meats. Among the ESBL ST types, ST23, 457, 117 were isolated in previous years.
Significance: Our investigation indicates that retail meats are a possible source increasing the rates of antibiotic resistance in human. Therefore, continued monitoring and strengthened surveillance in relation to food safety, in particular to retail meats distributed to markets, are recommended.