Reply
Thu 6 Oct, 2011 12:54 am
Context:
Advanced cephalosporins can no longer be used as empirical therapy in many countries. Hence, carbapenems, an antibiotic class that represents the last available weapon against many gram-negative bacilli, are being used increasingly for empirical therapy. Resistance to these agents will accelerate if carbapenems become standard first-line therapy worldwide, particularly in intensive care, where selective pressure and transmission risks are highest. Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter species can be highly resistant to ceftazidime, fluoroquinolones, and carbapenems. An increasing number of organisms are resistant to all antibiotics, including colistin12. K pneumoniae and E coli will probably become increasingly resistant to carbapenems by harbouring carbapenemases or nucleoside diphosphate enzymes, such as the New Delhi metallo-betalactamase (NDM1) 13. The spread of these resistant gram-negative organisms should be regarded as a growing but insufficiently publicised pandemic.Some drug resistance among Enterobacteriaceae came from the use of antibiotics in animals in the retail food chain. E coli and Salmonella strains resistant to fluoroquinolones and third-generation cephalosporins 14 have been associated with meat and poultry products.
Retail food chain means the organization through which food--from animal or plant sources--is processed and then sold to the consumer ("retail"). The author is saying that the use of antibiotics in livestock has lead to these organisms becomeing resistant to those antibiotics. The use of the term retail food chain is rather inexact. This is specifically about livestock, and specifically refers to the use of antibiotics when and where they are raised. Because from a capitalist point of view the most efficient means of production is in feedlots occupying little land but producing a lot of livestock, breeders have used antibiotics to fight the concentration of sources of disease among the herds. This has lead to the evolution of micro-organisms which are resistant to antibiotics. It is misleading to say retail food chain because after the animals leave the feedlot, they are butchered, and antibiotics are not administered in the slaughter house or any other portion of the retail food chain that leads to the store shelves from which the consumer purchases the meat products.