Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are emerging contaminants posing a potential worldwide human health risk. Intensive animal husbandry is believed to be a major contributor to the increased environmental burden of ARGs. Despite the volume of antibiotics used in China, little information is available regarding the corresponding ARGs associated with animal farms. We assessed type and concentrations of ARGs at three stages of manure processing to land disposal at three large-scale (10,000 animals per year) commercial swine farms in China. In-feed or therapeutic antibiotics used on these farms include all major classes of antibiotics except vancomycins. High-capacity quantitative PCR arrays detected 149 unique resistance genes among all of the farm samples, the top 63 ARGs being enriched 192-fold (median) up to 28,000-fold (maximum) compared with their respective antibiotic-free manure or soil controls. Antibiotics and heavy metals used as feed supplements were elevated in the manures, suggesting the potential for coselection of resistance traits. The potential for horizontal transfer of ARGs because of transposon-specific ARGs is implicated by the enrichment of transposases—the top six alleles being enriched 189-fold (median) up to 90,000-fold in manure—as well as the high correlation ( r 2 = 0.96) between ARG and transposase abundance. In addition, abundance of ARGs correlated directly with antibiotic and metal concentrations, indicating their importance in selection of resistance genes. Diverse, abundant, and potentially mobile ARGs in farm samples suggest that unmonitored use of antibiotics and metals is causing the emergence and release of ARGs to the environment.

Antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis linked to increased, and often unrestricted, antibiotic use in humans and animals. As one of the world's largest producers and consumers of antibiotics, China is witness to some of the most acute symptoms of this crisis. Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are widely distributed in surface water, sewage treatment plant effluent, soils and animal wastes. The emergence and increased prevalence of ARGs in the clinic/hospitals, especially carbapenem-resistant gram negative bacteria, has raised the concern of public health officials. It is important to understand the current state of antibiotic use in China and its relationship to ARG prevalence and diversity in the environment. Here we review these relationships and their relevance to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends witnessed in the clinical setting. This review highlights the issues of enrichment and dissemination of ARGs in the environment, and also future needs in mitigating the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment, particularly under the 'planetary health' perspective, i.e., the systems that sustain or threaten human health.

The relationship between broiler breast meat color and pH, moisture content, water-holding capacity (WHC), and emulsification capacity (EC) was investigated. In each of three replicate trials, fillets were collected from three different commercial processing plants according to breast meat lightness (L*) values as follows: lighter than normal (light, L* > 53), normal (48 < L* < 53), and darker than normal (dark, L* < 46). Color values of lightness (L*), redness (a*), and yellowness (b*) were measured at 0 and 24 h after collection. Fillets were then ground and homogenized prior to determining color, pH, moisture, WHC, and EC of the ground meat. There was a significant difference among the three color groups (light, normal, and dark) in L*, a*, pH, WHC, and EC. The L* values of whole raw breast fillets had significant negative correlation coefficients with ground meat EC (-0.9237), pH (-0.9610), and a* (-0.6540). Emulsification capacity had significant positive correlations with pH (0.9572) and water-holding capacity (0.7080). WHC had significant correlations with a* (0.8143), moisture (-0.7647), and pH (0.7963). Lighter-than-normal meat was associated with low pH, high moisture, low EC, and low WHC. These results indicate that wide differences in raw breast meat color exist and that these differences may be used by poultry further processors as an indicator of fillets with altered functional properties.