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Antibiotics in sausage increase the growth of pathogenic bacteria and destroy beneficial ones
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The antibiotics in the ground meat used to make salami or pepperoni can be powerful enough to kill the beneficial bacteria added during production to reduce the growth of pathogens, speed up the maturation process, and improve the taste of the meat.
These findings were published on the website of the American Society for Microbiology journal mBio.
Sausage manufacturers often add lactic acid-producing bacteria to their products. Lactic acid, in turn, is designed to control the fermentation process to make the product sufficiently acidic. This ensures the destruction of dangerous pathogenic bacteria that may be present in raw meat - E. coli or salmonella.
The maximum concentration level of antibiotics used in animal production is regulated by US and European Union legislation.
However, researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and University College Cork, Ireland, found that even at this regulated concentration, the antibiotics had more effect on lactic acid than on pathogens, allowing them to multiply freely.
"Antibiotics are used as growth promoters or to treat diseases in livestock. They may end up in meat, and the maximum dose is regulated by US and EU legislation. But paradoxically, even the low doses of antibiotics used in livestock farming are not strong enough to kill pathogenic microbes," says study co-author Hanna Ingmer from the University of Copenhagen.
During the experiment, scientists added low doses of oxytetracycline and erythromycin to meat containing lactobacilli, E. coli and salmonella. The concentration level of antibiotics did not exceed the dose permitted by law.
It turned out that under the influence of antibiotics, most of the beneficial bacteria died and were unable to acidify the minced meat sufficiently.
Pathogenic bacteria, on the contrary, not only survived despite the action of antibiotics, but also began to multiply even more actively in the absence of lactobacilli.
The experts intend to conduct a similar experiment not in laboratory conditions, but directly in production, since in this case the results may differ from those obtained in the laboratory.
If the results are identical, experts suggest several options for resolving the situation. First, to stop using antibiotics in livestock farming altogether, but no matter how good it sounds, in reality it will be extremely difficult to implement. The second option is to create new types of lactobacilli that would have a strong enough immunity to survive the effects of antibiotics. And the last way out of the situation is to check all products for pathogenic organisms at the production stage.
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