Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 8/8/11

On the heels of the largest Class I recall in history – in which 36 million pounds of ground turkey products were believed to be contaminated with a multi-drug resistant strain of Salmonella Heidelberg – French researchers have found yet another multidrug-resistant strain of salmonella.

Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in France found that a variant of the S. Kentucky strain shows high-level resistance to the antimicrobial ciprofloxacin, among others. The study, led by François-Xavier Weill and Simon Le Hello at the Pasteur Institute, was published online in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The most common Salmonella strain in U.S. poultry, S. Kentucky likely developed the resistance to the fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics in Nigeria and Morocco. The data allowed researchers to track the growth of the bacteria in real-time, and between 2002 and 2008 nearly 500 cases were recorded in France, the United Kingdom and Denmark. For France alone, 270 cases were confirmed between 2009 and 2010.
Heidelberg is one of the four antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella – along with Typhimurium, Newport and Hadar – that the Center for Science in the Public Interest has asked the USDA to declare an adulterant.

The researchers said this latest resistant strain must be contained soon.

“We hope that this publication might stir awareness among national and international health, food, and agricultural authorities so that they take the necessary measures to control and stop the dissemination of this strain before it spreads globally, as did another multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella, Typhimurium DT104, starting in the 1990s,” Le Hello said in a statement.

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