Resistant Salmonella: Deadly Yet Somehow Not Illegal

Maryn McKenna

confirmation, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the Salmonella samples recovered from patients are resistant to several antibiotics — ampicillin, tetracycline and streptomycin — that are commonly used not only in human medicine, but in agriculture as well. (The strain still responds to Cipro, a fluoroquinolone; ceftriaxone, a cephalosporin; and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, a drug combination best known under the name Bactrim.)

But the biggest revelation may have been that, in strict legal terms, there may have been no wrongdoing in the  distribution via turkey of the drug-resistant strain that has killed one person and sickened 78 — because Salmonella, the organism in question, is not classified by the federal government as something that is illegal to distribute. Read more at www.wired.com