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Food-Associated Stressors and Their Synergistic Roles in Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance across the Food Supply Chain
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This review identifies microplastics as one of several food supply chain stressors that synergistically promote bacterial antibiotic resistance, alongside antibiotic residues, heavy metals, and pesticides. Microplastics can serve as carriers for resistant bacteria and resistance genes, creating a 'One Health' pathway from agriculture and environment through food processing to human exposure.
Global bacterial antibiotic resistance threatens health, food safety, and sustainability. The food supply chain is a critical "One Health" pathway, linking agriculture, environment, and processing. However, systematic reviews addressing the impact of coexisting stressors on antibiotic resistance emergence and transmission across this continuum are lacking. This review innovatively synthesizes environmental inputs (antibiotic residues, fertilizers, heavy metals, pesticides, microplastics, climate change, and grazing) and processing/transport stressors (temperature, nonthermal technologies, pH, osmosis, disinfectants, food additives, probiotics, and trade), focusing on their individual and synergistic effects. These stressors enhance resistance and horizontal gene transfer by activating bacterial stress responses (sigma factors, SOS), altering membranes, and triggering mutations/efflux pumps. Coexisting stressors can further intensify, accelerate, and amplify resistance emergence and transmission. We propose multilevel mitigation strategies across the food chain, including curbing selective pressures at the source, optimizing food processing techniques to avoid stress-induced resistance, guiding consumer behavior, and strengthening international regulatory governance.
More Papers Like This
Food-AssociatedStressors and Their Synergistic Rolesin Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance across the Food Supply Chain
AI summary Read the abstract
This review identifies microplastics as one of several food supply chain stressors that synergistically promote bacterial antibiotic resistance, alongside antibiotic residues, heavy metals, and pesticides. Microplastics can serve as carriers for resistant bacteria and resistance genes, creating a 'One Health' pathway from agriculture and environment through food processing to human exposure.
The nexus of microplastics, food and antimicrobial resistance in the context of aquatic environment: Interdisciplinary linkages of pathways
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This review examines how microplastics in aquatic environments serve as surfaces where bacteria can grow, share antibiotic resistance genes, and then enter the food chain through contaminated seafood. The combination of microplastic pollution and antimicrobial resistance creates a compounding threat, as resistant bacteria riding on plastic particles can survive water treatment and reach humans. The authors call for interdisciplinary research connecting environmental science and public health to address this growing risk.
Understanding the Interplay between Antimicrobial Resistance, Microplastics and Xenobiotic Contaminants: A Leap towards One Health?
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This review examines the interplay between antimicrobial resistance, microplastics, and xenobiotic contaminants in the environment, highlighting how microplastics can serve as vectors for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes, posing combined threats to ecosystem and human health.
Recent advances in understanding the impact of microplastics on bacterial antibiotic resistance: mechanisms, evidence gaps, and One Health implications
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This review summarizes existing research on tiny plastic particles (microplastics) in environments like wastewater, rivers, and farms, finding they can host bacteria that carry antibiotic-resistance genes and may help spread these genes. The paper notes that while studies show enrichment of resistant bacteria on plastics, it remains unclear whether this translates into actual disease risk for humans or animals.
Environmental pollutants as modifiers of antimicrobial resistance risk across food systems: a One Health perspective
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Antibiotic resistant bacteria don't just come from overusing antibiotics, everyday pollutants like metals, pesticides, and microplastics in our food and water systems may also help resistant germs survive and spread. This review argues that just because pollution could theoretically boost resistance doesn't prove it's harming people, scientists need to trace the full path from pollution to your plate before sounding the alarm.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.