First the good news ……
To determine if MRSA is present in U.S. market hogs, Wagstrom reports the National Pork Board has funded a project with Leman Swine Chair Peter Davies, DVM, of the University of Minnesota. He will establish the prevalence of MRSA in swine veterinarians. Davies will also survey retail pork cuts for the presence of MRSA. The bacteria is not a known food safety concern.
Then the bad news
Being a carrier of MRSA, however, does not mean one will become sick or spread the bacteria to others, says Liz Wagstrom, DVM, assistant vice president of Science and Technology.Recent reports of community-acquired MRSA infections haven’t been linked to exposure to pigs, she points out.Holland has reported several hundred cases of MRSA, but only a handful of cases have been due to cloned complex 398, considered “the livestock-associated type of MRSA,” she says.Dutch and Canadian officials found MRSA carried in pigs, but it is not considered a pathogen in pigs.
A little naive or perhaps even disengenous. 1 in 3 carriers do have an infection of some sort. It also spreads from human to human
MRSA Scare Blown Out of Proportion | Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA).
