Think twice before you pick up your next chunk of meat, warns the scientists from US as they claim for the presence of lethal bacteria in majority of them.
 
As per the findings of a new research in the samples of the meat that is sold in five of the US cities, as many as 47% samples were found to be infected with the life-threatening bacteria.
 
The bacteria, namely Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), is resistant to drugs and thus is difficult to treat. It is learnt that some 500,000 patients in American hospitals contracted a staphylococcal infection each year because of its highly contagious nature.
 
Not only this, half of the contaminated samples were found to be equipped with the most deadly strain of S. aureus that is resistant to at least three of the antibiotics.
 
The findings have come as a rude shock for the researchers as the S. aureus is not even gets its place in the list of the bacteria that are usually under surveillance in the non-vegan products by the FDA. 
 
The routinely tested ones involve just Salmonella, Campylobacter, E. coli, and Enterococcus.
 
Lance Price from the Translational Genomics Research Institute, stated: "The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today”.
 
The bacteria elevate the risks of serious diseases like skin infections, pneumonia, meningitis, chest pain, sepsis etc.
 
The study findings have been published in the recent issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.