Kearney, Mo. – The American Meat Science Association (AMSA) is pleased to announce, Dr. John Schmidt and Kendra Waldbusser will be the featured speakers in the Concurrent Symposium over the Future of Science and Innovation at the 66th International Congress of Meat Science and Technology (ICoMST) and 73rd Reciprocal Meat Conference (RMC) in Orlando, Florida, USA. Dr. Schmidt and Mrs. Waldbusser will be the concurrent speakers on Tuesday, August 4, 2020. The topics for this concurrent symposium include two highly respected guest speakers who will bring scientific knowledge and real-life industry data and perspectives to the session.
SMART Antimicrobial Resistance Goals To Drive Meat Safety Improvement: Concerns that food-animal production significantly contributes to antimicrobial-resistant human infections have persisted for more than 20 years. Most antimicrobial resistance concerns are generalized. By their nature, non-specific concerns are unfalsifiable and can never be scientifically alleviated or remediated. Therefore, meat safety improvement begins with defining SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound) antimicrobial resistance goals. In the presentation Dr. John Schmidt’s, Research Microbiologist with the Meat Safety and Quality Research Unit at the USDA – United States Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC), will discuss the SMART process for the highest priority antimicrobial resistance issues facing the meat industry to facilitate scientific goal attainment. His recommendations and research will provide not only lessons to the industry and researchers on how to facilitate scientific goals addressing antimicrobial resistance, but also on how to identify and establish AMR-related resources and practices to assess the risk of transmission of AMR and MDR through food to humans by incorporating SMART-goal decision processes while examining its impact in meat animal production.
Overview of the Antimicrobial Resistance of Salmonella Recovered from U.S. Poultry Processing Plants: Kendra Waldbusser, Head of Food Safety and Quality Assurance for Pilgrim’s, will provide cutting edge insight into this critical area of food safety. She will analyze and discuss the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) results to which Salmonella isolates were subjected over the 2017-2019 period and that were collected from 26 different plants (of different production volumes) in the United States. Although multidrug resistance (MDR) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) remained the same over time, they significantly differed by serogroup and by year interactions. Moreover, resistance to ceftriaxone, one of the highest priorities, critically important (HPCI) antimicrobials for human medicine and that has a significant impact on human health were also significant by serogroup and by serogroup by year. The data presented here can be used by all stakeholders and attendees to conduct risk analysis and identify not only AMR challenges for small, medium and large producers but also management practices that potentially can be implemented throughout other industries (like turkey production) to mitigate the presence, emergence and selection of foodborne pathogens with AMR and MDR patterns through the food supply.
The AMSA 66th ICoMST and 73rd RMC will be held August 2-7, 2020 at the Walt Disney World Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida, USA. For more information please visit: www.icomst2020.com or contact Deidrea Mabry 1-800-517-AMSA ext. 12.
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AMSA fosters community and professional development among individuals who create and apply science to efficiently provide safe and high quality meat (defined as red meat (beef, pork and lamb), poultry, fish/seafood and meat from other managed species).
