Prevalence and Antimicrobial Resistance of Salmonella serotypes Isolated from Poultry Meat in Japan

: The prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Salmonella in 512 poultry meat samples collected from retail stores and poultry-processing plants in Japan between 2015 and 2016 were investigated. The results showed that 55.9% of poultry meat samples were contaminated with Salmonella, with nine different serotypes represented. The most frequent serovar was Salmonella enterica serovar Infantis, followed by S. Schwarzengrund, together accounting for 78.2% of the isolates. High antimicrobial resistance rates were observed against tetracycline (80.9% S. Infantis and 83.9% S. Schwarzengrund), streptomycin (53.4% S. Infantis and 76.8% S. Schwarzengrund), and kanamycin (33.6% S. Infantis and 82.1% S. Schwarzengrund). All tested isolates were susceptible to colistin and ciprofloxacin. In addition, a high proportion (65.6% of S. Infantis, 85.7% of S. Schwarzengrund) of Salmonella isolates were resistant to two or more antimicrobials, and 22 and 17 different resistance patterns were observed in the two strains, respectively. The predominant antibiotic resistance patterns were streptomycin-tetracycline (32/131, 24.4% of S. Infantis) and streptomycin-kanamycin-tetracycline-sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (43/112, 38.4% of S. Schwarzengrund). These data indicate that multidrug-resistant S. Infantis and S. Schwarzengrund have spread among poultry meat in Japan.