According to Young, what Marsden, Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (MRCVS), said in response to a previous GlobalMeatNews.com story was accurate. Marsden’s comment “emphasised the importance of using antibiotics responsibly on farms”, Young said, as well as the need for surveillance to help prevent the spread of MRSA in farm animals.
Marsden was responding to a report on the Soil Association's latest research on MRSA, which revealed that the ST398 had been found on UK farms. According to Marsden, claims over the prevalence of MRSA in the UK were overstated and, although the bug should be monitored, it was not necessarily a new issue and not an epidemic in the UK.
However, Young pointed out that the Soil Association did not claim MRSA ST393 had become epidemic on British farms. He said: “We made it clear this was the first-ever detection in the UK. We said that the strain was already epidemic in the European and North American pig populations.”
Young explained that MRSA ST398 had been found at the abattoir level in 61% of Spanish pigs; 60% of Germany’s pigs; 39% of Dutch pigs; and a study of pigs in the American Midwest found MRSA ST398 on 49% of the animals.
Since the strain had only recently emerged here, Young said the importance of surveillance in all major farm-animal species was important. He added that the appropriate surveillance would ensure appropriate action could be taken to prevent the bug spreading in the UK as it has done else where.
One in four
Young also questioned Marsden’s claim that one in four people in the UK had MRSA on their skin. He said: “If true, it would have meant that the emergence of MRSA in livestock was less significant, since people would be frequently colonised by the bacteria anyway. The article confuses Staphylococcus aureus, which about one in three people carry on their skin, with the methicillin-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus, which is currently found on up to 1.5% of the general population.”