Harmful bacteria, many of those now resistant to commonly used antibiotics, are prevalent at retail meat shops across the capital Dhaka, researchers said, highlighting the food safety risks in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.
The study, titled ‘Prevalence of antibiotic resistance bacterial contamination in local retail meat shops and hygiene practices by vendors’, was published in the Journal of Biosciences and Public Health on August 18.
Conducted between March and May, the study collected 45 samples from beef and chicken cutting boards and cleaning water drums at the meat markets across the capital.
While talking about the method of collecting samples, researchers said that the samples were stored in saline solution using sterile cotton swabs, and taken to laboratories for microbiological analysis.
The researcher group also isolated bacterial colonies and identified them using selective media and biochemical tests, before conducting antibiotic sensitivity checks with the disc diffusion method.
The results showed high levels of microbiological contamination. Escherichia coli was present at up to 1 million colony-forming units, while gram-negative bacteria such as Klebsiella reached up to 1,00,000 CFU.
Besides, non-spore-forming bacteria such as Enterobacter, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterobacteriaceae family’s Citrobacter bacteria were also found to a significant extent in the samples.
The researcher team also conducted a study on the resistivity of the isolate, a culture of the microorganisms isolated for the study, towards commonly used antibiotics to assess the extent of danger.
The team found that 70 per cent of the isolates were resistant to Azithromycin, a widely used drug for respiratory and intestinal infections, while 63 per cent found resistant to both tetracycline and ciprofloxacin — drugs widely used to treat urinary tract, skin and lungs infections.
Chicken retail shops were found to be particularly concerning.
Pseudomonas isolates from chicken cutting boards showed resistance to all six antibiotics tested, including gentamicin and ceftriaxone, which are often used as last-line treatments in critical care.
‘These findings point to serious lapses in food hygiene and the growing spread of antimicrobial resistance through food chains,’ said Tanzir Hassan Siddiqui, corresponding author of the study and a public health and informatics student at Jahangirnagar University.
The study also surveyed 224 meat vendors in Dhaka, exposing major gaps in hygiene practices.
Nearly 88 per cent of them said that they had never received food safety training, while more than half admitted to not using gloves or aprons.
Many relied on clothes or reused water to clean chopping boards, conditions that experts say allow bacteria to persist and spread into consumers’ kitchens.
Antimicrobial resistance is already a global health crisis, contributing to nearly 5 million deaths annually, according to ‘The Lancet’, one of the world’s highest-impact academic journals and also one of the oldest medical journals still in publication.
In countries with rapid urbanisation and weak oversight, foodborne transmission of resistant bacteria is considered a major driver.
‘Bangladesh, like many low- and middle-income countries, faces a dual challenge: weak enforcement of food safety regulations and widespread misuse of antibiotics in livestock production,’ said Nihad Adnan, a microbiology professor at Jahangirnagar University.
Farmers often administer antibiotics to animals for growth promotion or as preventive measures, practices the World Health Organisation has repeatedly warned against.
‘Once these resistant bacteria enter the human population, infections become much harder and costlier to treat,’ Adnan said.
‘The risk is no longer theoretical — it is happening now,’ he observed.
The researchers urged urgent action, including stricter hygiene monitoring in wet markets, mandatory training for meat handlers and tighter regulation of antibiotic use in agriculture.
They also called for consumer education, warning that washing meat with contaminated water or preparing food on unclean surfaces could carry bacteria into households.
‘Our study reveals just a fragment of the larger problem,’ Tanzir said.
‘Without coordinated national action on food safety and antibiotic stewardship, Bangladesh risks facing untreatable infections spreading through its everyday food supply,’ Tanzir noted in the policy recommendation on the research paper.
