Britain publishes about MRSA st398 (cc398) - elsewhere

The irony strikes, but perhaps it is more important than that.

The Journal of British vets publishes about MRSA st398 in Holland and Denmark – a disease which the government veterinarians claim does not exist in pigs in Britain.

But it is a fairly new departure to publish anything on MRSA st398 in Britain. 

Independent pig vets knowing that the government vets were running a cover-up, might well be tempted to encourage the publication of something, anything, to be able to stay well clear of any cover-up

The research itself, published elsewhere earlier, really confirms the our long held view that live movements are the key to this and other pig diseases – and their spread into humans and human hospitals.

There has been a vast increase in the movement of livestock, semen and embryos internationally in the last few years, much on recklessly issued veterinary health certificates.

The knowledge that trade politics and veterinary fees and protection drives the impetus to blame anything other than live animal movements, and that is likely to be strongly supported by protectionist farmers and their organisations wanting to blame meat imports, is pure gold.

In a way, that last paragraph sums up the battle of the last years. It is applicable not just in Britain, but worldwide and an understanding has a massive potential for improving human health.

The world has been misled and the children die.

Details here

Veterinary Record doi:10.1136/vr.100704

·         Papers

Transmission of MRSA CC398 strains between pig farms related by trade of animals

1.     C. Espinosa-Gongora, DV¹, 

2.     E. M. Broens, DVM, Ph³, 

3.     A. Moodley, MSc, Ph¹, 

4.     J. P. Nielsen² and

5.     L. Guardabassi, DVM, Ph¹

+Author Affiliations

1.        Department of Veterinary Disease Biology, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

2.        Department of Large Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

3.        Quantitative Veterinary Epidemiology Group, Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

1.     ^{E-mail for correspondence}ceg@life.ku.dk

Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clonal complex (CC) 398 is a genetic lineage associated with livestock, especially pigs. The authors investigated the role of pig trade in the transmission of MRSA CC398 between farms using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), a highly discriminatory method for strain typing. PFGE analysis of 58 MRSA isolates from a retrospective study in the Netherlands and a prospective study in Denmark provided molecular evidence that the strains present in five of the eight recipient farms were indistinguishable from those occurring in the corresponding supplying farm. The molecular typing data confirm the findings of a previous risk-analysis study indicating that trading of colonised pigs is a vehicle for transmission of MRSA CC398.