title: Antimicrobial resistance monitoring projects for zoonotic and indicator bacteria of animal origin: common aspects and differences between EASSA and EFSA.
abstract: Resistance monitoring programmes are essential to generate data for inclusion in the scientific risk assessment of the potential for transmission of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria or their resistance determinants from food-producing animals to humans. This review compares the technical specifications on monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic Salmonella, Campylobacter and indicator Escherichia coli and Enterococcus as performed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) with veterinary pharmaceutical industry's European Antimicrobial Susceptibility Surveillance in Animals (EASSA) programme. The authors conclude that most of EFSA's recent monitoring recommendations have been covered by EASSA since the start of the latter programme in 1998. The major difference between the two programmes is the classification into 'susceptible' versus 'resistant'. While EFSA categorises all isolates with an MIC value above the epidemiological cut-off value as 'resistant', EASSA differentiates between 'percentage decreased susceptible' and 'percentage clinical resistant' strains by applying both epidemiological cut-off values and clinical breakpoints. Because there is still a need to further improve harmonisation among individual EU Member State activities, Animal Health Industry welcomes EFSA's initiative to further improve the quality of resistance monitoring as it is of utmost importance to apply standardised collection procedures and harmonised susceptibility testing, when monitoring antimicrobial resistance across Europe.
authors.affiliation: EASSA Study Group, CEESA, Rue Defacqz 1 boite 8, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Hilde
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Moyaert
authors.affiliation: EASSA Study Group, CEESA, Rue Defacqz 1 boite 8, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: anno.jong@bayer.com.
authors.forename: Anno
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.affiliation: EASSA Study Group, CEESA, Rue Defacqz 1 boite 8, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Shabbir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Simjee
authors.affiliation: EASSA Study Group, CEESA, Rue Defacqz 1 boite 8, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Thomas
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D002167:Campylobacter / Q000235:genetics*; D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial / Q000235:genetics*; D016983:Enterococcus / Q000302:isolation & purification; D062665:Epidemiological Monitoring; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000302:isolation & purification; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005516:Food Microbiology / Q000379:methods; D059022:Food Safety / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000592:standards / Q000662:veterinary; D012475:Salmonella / Q000235:genetics*; D015047:Zoonoses / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000635:transmission
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents
keywords: Antimicrobial susceptibility; Campylobacter; Enterococcus; Escherichia coli; Food-producing animals; Salmonella