Affiliation: | a Laboratory of Veterinary Public Health, Department of Veterinary Medicine, College of Bioresource Sciences, Nihon University, 1866 Kameino, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8510, Japan b Institute of Public Health and Environmental Sciences Research, Prefecture of Gunma, 378 Kamioki, Maebashi, Gunma 371-0052, Japan |
Abstract: | A survey was conducted to examine the prevalence of Arcobacter species among meat samples and to investigate the antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolates in Japan. In 1998 and 1999, samples of beef (n=90), pork (n=100) and chicken meat (n=100) were purchased from seven retail shops. Arcobacter species were isolated from 2.2%, 7.0% and 23.0% of beef, pork and chicken meat samples, respectively. The rate of isolations in chicken meats was shown to be significantly higher than those of beef and pork. Species-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) demonstrated that the most dominant Arcobacter species was Arcobacter butzleri among the isolates examined. Multiple contaminations with different Arcobacter species were observed in 5% of the chicken samples. Almost all the strains tested showed resistance to vancomycin (100%) and methicillin (97.5%). Strains resistant to cephalothin, sulfamethoxazole–trimethoprim, nalidixic acid and chloramphenicol were detected at the rate of 81.1%, 67.2%, 53.5% and 24.6%, respectively. All Arcobacter strains examined were susceptible to ampicillin, tetracycline, streptomycin and kanamycin. |