Current Status of Antibiotic Resistance in the Six Major Foodborne Bacteria

Bacterial pathogens still represent a serious public health issue. Special attention should be paid to bacteria that are usually transmitted through food. More relevantly, several isolates found in food exhibit (usually high) antibiotic resistance, which, in the case of human or animal infection, will reduce treatment efficacy. Hence, this review seeks to summarize and make available to researchers on the subject the most recent findings regarding antibiotic resistance profiles of common pathogens that are transferred into food. The bacterial pathogens responsible for most poisonings and illnesses include Salmonella spp., Listeria spp., Campylobacter spp., Staphylococcus spp., E. coli pathotypes, and Cronobacter spp. Therefore, we will focus this review on these pathogens. In this way, this writing will not only provide valuable information regarding which matrices are more susceptible to bacterial contamination, but in the end, the reader will be able to identify which antibiotics have been tested on these isolates and where the gaps are in the phenotypic determination of resistance to antibiotics, while highlighting several genotypic traits specific to some of these bacteria.