A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign research team has received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to participate in a retail surveillance program that monitors meat products for resistant bacteria. This project supports the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) by expanding retail food antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance in Illinois.
The researchers will collect poultry, meat, and seafood samples twice monthly from selected retail outlets in Illinois and test them for major foodborne bacteria.
“We’ll conduct serotyping, whole-genome sequencing, and molecular analysis to identify resistance patterns in these samples. Then we will use the data to create a model that can help predict and address AMR and develop strategies to mitigate the risk,” said Gireesh Rajashekara, professor and associate dean in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the U. of I., and co-investigator on the grant.
The long-term goal is to strengthen national AMR surveillance and protect public health by identifying emerging risks from resistant foodborne bacteria, he said.
The university’s press release can be found by clicking here.
