According to a recent analysis of Food and Drug Administration data, about 30% of U.S. retail meat samples recently tested positive for at least one type of potentially harmful bacteria, and nearly one in four single species of bacterium collected were multidrug-resistant.

The review by TraceOne, a company that makes regulatory compliance software for the food and beverage industry, analyzed data for 2019 through 2021 from the FDA's National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), which collects data on enteric bacteria found in people, retail meat samples, and animals at slaughter. NARMS focuses on bacteria that are associated with foodborne illness, such as Salmonella, Escherichia coli, and Campylobacter. It also collects data on Enterococcus, which can indicate fecal contamination. The report was published in the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 48 million people in the United States get sick from foodborne illnesses each year. Of these, approximately 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. Bacterial contamination of retail meat — particularly by pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter — is a major contributor to this.

"Meat can become contaminated with these bacteria at several points during the production process — most often during slaughter, handling, or packaging," the report notes. "Bacteria from the animal’s intestinal tract can spread to the meat surface if sanitation procedures are not strictly followed."

The data show that 36% of meat samples (ground beef, ground turkey, chicken, and pork chops) tested positive for bacteria. Chicken samples harbored the highest rates of Salmonella and Campylobacter (17.9% and 17.1%, respectively), the two bacterial pathogens most commonly associated with foodborne illness, while ground turkey had the highest rate of E coli (67.2%) and notably high levels of Salmonella (11.4%). 

The analysis also found that nearly a quarter (22.8%) of bacterial isolates obtained from the retail meat samples were resistant to three or more antibiotic classes. Ground turkey had the highest overall MDR rate (29.7%), while chicken meat had the highest rate of MDR Salmonella (39.1%) and an overall MDR rate of 25.6%. Among all bacteria, Salmonella had the highest overall MDR rate at 35.5%, followed by E coli (26.0%), Enterococcus (15.3%), and Campylobacter (13.6%).

The presence of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is a growing concern in food safety, the study found, particularly when those bacteria are resistant to multiple drug classes. These multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains make infections significantly harder to treat and can increase the risk of hospitalization or death. In the food industry, antimicrobial resistance often arises when antibiotics are routinely used in livestock production — not only to treat infections, but also to promote growth and prevent disease in intensive farming environments. This repeated exposure selects for resistant strains, which ultimately multiply and enter the food chain.

Analysis of geographic differences in food safety, based on meat-bacteria combinations consistently tested across all states, revealed that the top five states for overall contamination risk were Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Wyoming did not report results to the database.

In Wyoming, you can report food-born illness to the state: health.wyo.gov/publichealth/infectious-disease-epidemiology-unit/foodborne-illness-complaint/.

The Consumer Health Services Division of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture conducts inspections of retail food establishments throughout Wyoming (where there is not a local health department who does inspections) to help ensure safety of Wyoming residents. As part of this process, the WDA conducts at least one inspection per year of retail establishments across the state based on their risk factor.

Check safety records for tyour favorite dining establishments: wda.safefoodinspection.com/Inspection/PublicInspectionSearch.aspx