The use of antibiotics in animal husbandry promotes the development of antibiotic -resistant bacteria. Such germs can then also be found in the meat of the animals and end up in the supermarket, as a sample analysis on behalf of Greenpeace showed. Half of the poultry and a good third of the pork products were loaded with at least one germ that was resistant to one or more antibiotics.
In order to protect farm animals such as cows, pigs and chickens in factory farming, they are often treated with antibiotics as a precaution. However, this preventive and frequent use of antibiotics promotes the development of resistance in pathogens. In this way, multi -resistant germs can arise in animal husbandry, against which the available medication are ineffective. This makes infectious diseases more and more difficult or no longer treatable. In Germany, around 2400 people die from multi -resistant pathogens every year, as a study by the European Center for Prevention and Control of Diseases (ECDC) in 2018 showed. However, these germs do not remain in the stable, but can sometimes also be found in the waste water, in the manure and in the meat of the animals.
How is fresh meat from the refrigerated counter?
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace has now tested how high the burden on the meat products is. In four cities, they bought a total of 43 fresh meat packs of the own brands of large supermarket chains and had the laboratory tested which antibiotic-resistant bacteria occur. Among the rehearsals were five pork and two poultry meat products from Aldi, Edeka, Kaufland, Lidl and Rewe as well as three pork and a poultry test from Netto and Penny. All samples came from refrigerated counter and chests for self -service, including fillets, schnitzel, goulash and sausages.
The result: “Of the 43 meat samples examined, 18 were burdened with antibiotic -resistant bacteria,” reports Greenpeace. In pork meat, this concerned 39 percent of the samples (12 out of 31), 50 percent for chicken meat (6 out of 12). In total, the laboratory found 20 different bacterial strains with at least one resistance to antibiotics, including twelve tribes by Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), six by Escherichia Coli and two Serratia Fonticola. In most stressed samples, only one of these types of germ, two samples were double -loaded.
The Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety BVL found multi -resistant germs in meat from pigs and poultry in its “zoonose monitoring” of 2023, but somewhat less often than in the sample from Greenpeace. According to BVL, fresh pork was contaminated with MRSA, for example, with MRSA and five percent with resistant E.Coli tribes, fresh chicken meat to about five percent with MRSA and 33 percent with resistant E.Coli tribes. Overall, the BVL determined a “decreasing trend in the occurrence” of antibiotic -resistant germs in fresh meat.
Despite reduced use, antibiotics remain a problem
According to the Robert Koch Institute, the pathogens found in the test can generally be transferred to humans via food, although there are other sources for such germs, especially hospitals. It is currently unclear how strong animal husbandry contributes to the problem of non -treatable infections by antibiotic -resistant germs in humans.
According to Greenpeace, the finds confirm in the sample that antibiotic resistance originates not only in the hospital but also in the animal stable. The problem is known and it is already controlled-today less than a third of the amount of antibiotics from 2011 are used. “Even if the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry has decreased significantly in the past decade, antibiotic-resistant germs on pig and poultry meat are still a problem,” says Greenpeace. The organization therefore calls for the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry to limit legally stricter. Antibiotics should no longer be used as a precaution, but only for sick animals and special reserve antibiotics are only used in human medicine. From the meat manufacturers and supermarkets, Greenpeace also demands that they are no longer producing or promoting cheap meat from factory farming. This would also make less necessary to use antibiotics.
For buyers, the findings primarily mean paying attention to good kitchen hygiene when storing and processing the meat and always roasting or boiling the meat thoroughly to kill the germs. However, this generally applies to all fresh meat products, not only to those examined by the supermarkets examined, in order to kill all potentially contained pathogens – also those without antibiotic resistance.
Sources: Greenpeace EV, Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety BVL, Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BFR)
