The report looked at antimicrobial resistance patterns in bacteria isolated from humans, retail meats, and animals at slaughter in from 2012 and 2013.
Specifically, the report focuses on major foodborne pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics that are considered important to human medicine, and on multidrug resistant pathogens (described as resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics).
These include pathogens commonly found on poultry products such as Salmonella and Campylobacter.
The FDA said that most of the data indicated that resistance trends were heading in the right direction.
For example, about 80 per cent of human Salmonella isolates are not resistant to any of the tested antibiotics, a finding that has not changed in the past 10 years. Further, resistance to ceftriaxone, azithromycin, and quinolones, three important drugs used to treat human Salmonella isolates, remains below 3 per cent.
Salmonella multi-drug resistance (resistance to three or more classes of antibiotics) in human, cattle, and chicken isolates has not changed (~10 per cent) in the last decade, and the numbers of multi-drug resistant Salmonella isolates in retail chicken have gone down (~3 per cent).
Campylobacter jejuni resistance to the fluoroquinolone ciprofloxacin, the most common antibiotic used to treat human C. jejuni illness, was at its lowest level in retail chicken to date (11 per cent). Campylobacter jejuni causes most human Campylobacter infections.
However, the FDA said it was of concern that multidrug resistance (MDR) in human isolates of a common Salmonella serotype continues to rise. Resistance has more than doubled from 18 per cent in 2011 to 46 per cent in 2013.
An increase in MDR and ceftriaxone resistance was also observed in Salmonella serotype Dublin isolated from cattle and human sources.
