Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria: An Emerging Seafood Safety Concern

Seafood is one of the widely consumed foods of animal origin. Due to the protein-rich biochemical composition and the nature of the habitat, management of quality and safety of seafood from a microbial perspective is a challenge. Fish and shellfish harvested from coastal-marine environment are known to harbor numerous pathogens, acquired either naturally from the seawater or due to the contamination of the aquatic environment. The problem of human pathogens in seafood is confounded by them being multiple drug-resistant (MDR). Infections by MDR bacteria can be complicated by the fact that these bacteria are recalcitrant to many clinically relevant antibiotics. Many known pathogens have acquired abilities to tolerate multiple antibiotics. Such bacteria can contaminate seafood via different pathways and end up in the human food chain. Thus, seafood as vehicles of multiple drug-resistant human pathogenic bacteria is an emerging problem that can potentially compromise the safety of seafood for consumption as well as its acceptance in the global market. The current trend in seafood safety assurance is limited to screening for pathogenic bacteria while grossly overlooking 358the possibility of the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Hence, it is imperative from the food safety point of view to determine the extent to which antibiotic-resistant bacteria are prevalent in seafood, the molecular basis of antimicrobial resistance, and the sources of such bacteria. This will ultimately help in understanding the dynamics of microbial interaction in the aquatic environment, identifying the critical routes of contamination, developing methods to detect them, and devising strategies to prevent the contamination of seafood.