Prevalence and antibiotic resistance of Campylobacter spp. isolated from chicken meat, pork, and beef in Korea, from 2001 to 2006

A total of 770 samples of retail raw meat were examined for the presence of Campylobacter spp. The samples were obtained randomly from 232 retail stores in Korea from September 2001 to April 2006. The highest contamination rates were observed in chicken meat (220 181.4%] of 270 samples), whereas the rates of contamination in pork and beef were extremely low (1.6 and 1.2%, respectively). The antibiotic-resistant patterns of the 317 Campylobacter isolates were examined by the agar dilution method. Resistance to doxycycline was the most common (97.5%), followed by ciprofloxacin (95.9%), nalidixic acid (94.6%), tetracycline (94.6%), enrofloxacin (84.2%), and erythromycin (13.6%). All Campylobacter isolates from the retail raw meat were resistant to at least one of the six antibiotics tested, and 296 isolates (93.4%) showed multidrug (four or more antibiotics) resistance. This demonstrates that the multidrug-resistant Campylobacter species are widespread in meats in Korea. Therefore, further investigations will be needed to determine appropriate methods for eliminating Campylobacter contamination in industrial chicken production and food chains.