b'MRSAWhat is it?MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is any strain of the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium that has become resistant to a range of antibiotics. Healthy people may carry the bacterium withoutfrom the older and better studied hospital-developing any symptoms at all butassociated strains. In 2003, ST398 was found children, the elderly and those within pigs in the Netherlands and in British weakened immune systems are all at afarmed animals in 2011. It was discovered greater risk. One new variant - ST398 -in cows, their milk and also a number of has emerged in farmed animals and thispeople who, it is thought, were infected by can also spread to people. There is ancontact with infected animals or by people increasing trend in zoonotic transmission inwho work with infected animals 130 .Europe 128 . Surveys conducted on retail beef, pig and poultry meat on sale in the UK haveMRSA has since been found in UK poultry 131also detected MRSA 129 . and pigs 132 . Researchers said that the idea it may have arisen due to overuse History of antibiotics on farms was a credible MRSA was discovered in the UK in 1961.hypothesis 133 . In the late 1990s it became clear thatIn 2007, it was reported that almost half of community-acquired MRSA infections wereall Dutch pig farmers were infected with caused by strains of MRSA that differed 22'