Surveillance for antimicrobial resistance in enteric commensals and pathogens in Australian pigs

57 Pages

Author(s): Australian Pork Limited , Australian Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance Ecology , ACE Laboratory Services , Murdoch University - Medical and Molecular Sciences

In 2013, the Australian Government Department of Agriculture sponsored a review of the national surveillance programs in place for monitoring AMR and AMU in animals around the world with a view to defining a program suitable for Australia and combined this with roundtable discussions with key stakeholders in the agriculture and veterinary sectors. The review “Surveillance and reporting of antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic usage in animals and agriculture in Australia” (Shaban et al., 2014) identified one of the major components of surveillance as the assessment of AMR in commensal bacteria and pathogens present in the gut of food animals at slaughter. 

The objectives of this project were to estimate the prevalence of resistance against specified antimicrobials amongst E. coli, Salmonella spp., Enterococcus spp., and Campylobacter spp. isolated from the gut of Australian finisher pigs at slaughter.

This proof of concept study successfully integrated industry-facilitated collection of samples from abattoir specimens, primary culture of commensal and pathogenic bacterial species at a NATA accredited laboratory selected by industry and antimicrobial susceptibility testing at specialist reference laboratories currently undertaking AMR surveillance of human and veterinary pathogens. This will be a successful model to follow for further industry proof of concept studies.