Results of the three-year study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in the November 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Edward Belongia, M.D., and his colleagues examined poultry exposure as a risk factor for antibiotic resistance in Enterococcus faecium, a gut bacterium that is increasingly the cause of infections in hospitals. The investigation team focused on use of a growth-promoting antibiotic, called virginiamycin, in poultry.

“We’ve known for a long time that resistant bacteria can be found on retail poultry products, but our study is one of the first to show an association between human carriage of antibiotic resistance genes and eating poultry or handling raw poultry.

“These results indicate that virginiamycin use in poultry leads to transfer of antibiotic resistance genes to human gut bacteria through the food supply and they provide additional evidence that use of growth promoters in animals may have long-term consequences for human health.

After exposure to virginiamycin, E. faecium from conventional poultry and from patients who consumed poultry became resistant to Synercid more often than E. faecium from vegetarians or from antibiotic-free poultry. Some of the resistance was attributed to a specific gene and both the gene and resistance were associated with touching raw poultry meat and frequent poultry consumption.

Laboratory tests showed the bacteria isolated from patients and vegetarians had no pre-existing resistance to Synercid. Resistance was rare among antibiotic-free poultry but a majority of bacterial isolates from conventional poultry samples were resistant.

In other words, greedy agri-business creeps put crap into chickens that makes preparation and consumption of their poultry decrease your own capacity to resist infection. A fine mess!