Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium Clone in Swine, Europe

摘要

To the Editor: The use of antimi-crobial agents for growth promotion(AGP) in food-producing animals hasbeen extensively debated because ofthe risk of establishing a reservoir ofantimicrobial resistance genes orantimicrobial-resistant organisms ofpotential relevance for human health.This concern has motivated the pro-gressive ban of the use of differentAGP in the European Union, whichbegan in 1997 with avoparcin and willend in 2006 (1). Worldwide trade ofliving animals for food production orbreeding and of meat productsenables multidrug-resistant pathogensto spread across national borders. Intercontinental dissemination ofantimicrobial-resistant bacteria asso-ciated with food animals has beendescribed for particular clones such asSalmonella enterica TyphimuriumDT104 or Escherichia coli O157:H7and for transferable genetic elementssuch as the genomic island SG1 or thestreptococcal plasmid pRE25 (2).Vancomycin-resistant enterococci(VRE) in European farms were ini-tially associated with the intensive useof avoparcin; however, the persist-ence of VRE in food animal environ-ments after years of avoparcin with-drawal indicates that coselection byfurther antimicrobial or other agents,increased fitness of strains, andmobile genetic elements cannot beruled out (1–3).