Project Number: 6612-32000-005-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Feb 01, 2011
End Date: Jan 31, 2016

Objective:
1. To elucidate and provide descriptive data, such as prevalence and/or trends, including antimicrobial susceptibilities, and molecular subtyping for foodborne pathogens in food animals through the animal sampling arm of the NARMs program. The project will (1) continue to improve the standardization and quality control of methods used; and (2) where appropriate and necessary re-evaluate and/or develop improved sampling strategies to answer priority questions for NARMS in food animal production that are consistent with the overall NARMS goals and objectives as described on the NARMS web site. 2. Be a national resource of enteric bacterial isolates and resistance data for food animals from NARMS and US-VetNet. This resource will facilitate the identification and characterization of antimicrobial resistance as it emerges. Further, it will facilitate the identification and implementation of any new research needs by the complementary research project within this Unit. It is expected that the project will be highly responsive to requests for data from FDA-CVM, USDA-FSIS, and other stakeholders.

Approach:
Continual comparison and evaluation of existing culture methodology and quality control of methods. Where appropriate and necessary re-evaluate and/or develop improved sampling strategies to answer priority questions for NARMS in food animal production that are consistent with the overall NARMS goals and objectives as described on the NARMS web site.