Antibiotics in sausages enhance the growth of pathogenic bacteria and destroy useful
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Antibiotics contained in minced meat, which is made from salami or pepperoni, can be powerful enough to destroy useful bacteria added in the production process to reduce the development of pathogenic microflora, accelerate the ripening process of meat and improve its taste.
Such conclusions were published on the website of the journal of the American Society of Microbiologists mBio.
Often, sausage manufacturers add to their production bacteria that produce lactic acid. Lactic acid, in turn, is designed to control the fermentation process in order to make the product sufficiently acidic. This ensures the destruction of dangerous pathogenic bacteria that may be present in raw meat - Escherichia coli or salmonella.
The maximum concentration of antibiotics used in livestock production is regulated by US law and the European Union.
However, researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the College at the University of Cork, Ireland, found that even in this concentration-determined concentration, antibiotics affect lactic acid more than pathogenic organisms, allowing them to multiply freely.
"Antibiotics are used as growth stimulants or for the treatment of cattle diseases. In the end, they may find themselves in meat, the maximum dose of which is regulated by the laws of the United States and the EU. But, paradoxically, even the low doses of antibiotics used in livestock production are not so strong as to kill pathogenic microbes, "says co-author of the study from the University of Copenhagen, Hannah Ingmer.
During the experiment, scientists were added to meat containing lactobacilli, Escherichia coli and Salmonella, low doses of oxytetracycline and erythromycin. The level of antibiotic concentration did not exceed the dose permitted by law.
It turned out that under the influence of antibiotics most of the beneficial bacteria died and could not acidify the meat mince sufficiently.
Pathogenic bacteria, on the contrary, not only survived, despite the action of antibiotics, but also began to multiply in the absence of lactobacilli even more actively.
Experts intend to conduct such an experiment is not in the laboratory, but directly in production, because in this case the results may differ from those obtained in the laboratory.
In the event that the results are identical, experts suggest several solutions to the situation. First, to abandon the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry in general, but however well this sounded, in practice it will be extremely difficult. The second option is to create new types of lactobacilli, which would have strong enough immunity to survive when exposed to antibiotics. And the last way out of the situation is to check all the products for the maintenance of pathogenic organisms at the production stage.
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