Superbugs in Poultry

In an investigation conducted by Canada’s CBC TV news, two-thirds of 100 chicken samples from major grocers in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal were contaminated with bacteria including E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter. Much of bacteria was resistant to up to eight different types of antibiotics. Scientists link the rise in such resistance to overuse of antibiotics in both animal agriculture and human medicine. “Don’t think for a moment this is just a Canadian problem,” says Maryn McKenna, an infection disease expert and author of Superbug. In 2008, the US National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System found 38.2 percent of chicken-breast salmonella resistant to three or more antibiotics.