7.1 Organisms of interest
This course focuses on three common animal pathogens included in the list of thirteen priority bacterial pathogens for surveillance of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System (GLASS), and on two bacterial genera widely used in the monitoring of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in farm animals (Table 6). Information about the GLASS programme can be found in the Introducing AMR surveillance systems course.
| Animal pathogen | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| GLASS pathogens | Escherichia coli | Common in poultry and livestock |
| Salmonella species | Common in all production animals | |
| Staphylococcus aureus | Common in poultry, farmed ruminants and pigs | |
| Used for AMR monitoring | Enterococcus species particularly E. faecium and E. faecalis | Causes infections in humans and resistance is a particular problem Can cause sporadic infections in farm animals |
| Campylobacter spp. | An important cause of human gastroenteritis which may result in antimicrobial use, especially C. jejuni and C. coli C. fetus subsp. fetus and C. fetus subspecies venerealis cause infections in sheep and cattle |
7 Isolation and identification of key pathogens of interest in terrestrial farmed animals
