 In my video on antibiotic-resistant genes, I explored how more were found in the guts of those who eat meat, dairy, and eggs than those who eat completely plant-based, but does the transfer of bacteria from animal foods in the human gut result in differences in actual clinical outcomes? Other than food poisoning, of course. Food-borne bacteria second about 350 million people every year. Most of that can be traced to meat, dairy products, and eggs. Besides food poisoning, though, what about extra-intestinal infections? Infections outside the digestive tract. For example, due to pathogenic and antibiotic-resistant E. coli from retail chicken breasts. Infections where, though? The urinary tract. There's a type of E. coli called ST131, which is a food-borne uropathogen, meaning it causes urinary tract infections, most of which are just bladder infections, which typically amount to a little more than a painful annoyance, but can become invasive and spread up into the kidneys and invade the bloodstream and end your life. E. coli ST131 emerged explosively in the last 20 years or so to become the most important multi-drug-resistant uropathogen in circulation today. Urinary tract infections are caused principally by ascending E. coli infection via an intestine-stool urethra root, meaning these E. coli that cause UTIs, called extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli, or XPEC bacteria, start out in the colon, make it to the anus, and then make their way up into the urethra, then into your bladder. How do they get into your intestines in the first place? That's where the chicken comes in. The role of poultry meat can be to introduce the XPEC bacteria, allowing it to colonize the rectums of consumers lying in wait until an opportunity to cause infection presents itself, for example, thrusting from sexual intercourse can introduce the bacteria into the urethra. The time lag between human-XPEC acquisition in the intestine and the bladder infection has been the fundamental challenge linking the two, but we now have strong evidence that a substantial portion of the ST131 strains infecting humans originate from poultry, but they couldn't tell whether any single infection arose from direct exposure to contaminated poultry or indirectly from chicken meat from human-to-human transmission from, say, a partner who ate some contaminated poultry. What percentage of human UTIs arise from poultry? Researchers analyzed E. coli isolates from urine samples from patients with suspected UTIs and compared them to the bacteria on retail meat samples in the same region using DNA fingerprinting techniques. They found that about a fifth of E. coli isolates from suspected cases of UTIs belong to types found in local retail poultry. 21% might not sound like a lot, but E. coli UTIs are one of the most common infectious diseases in the United States, affecting approximately 7 million women, so contaminated chicken may result in more than a million UTIs in American women every year. This may explain why women infected with multi-drug-resistant E. coli reported more frequent chicken consumption, putting them at nearly four times the odds. The frequent consumption of pork was also a risk factor. Wait, is it founded pigs too? Human expect. Those extra intestinal E. coli that cause UTIs have also been identified on pig farms, in pigs, and in retail pork meat, albeit at considerably lower levels than in poultry or chicken meat. So chicken is riskiest, pork less so, and beef could be considered the safest from a UTI standpoint, since cattle don't appear to be a reservoir of these particular types of E. coli. Okay, well if meat, including poultry and pork, is the major reservoir for these UTI bacteria, then vegetarians who avoid meat should theoretically suffer less exposure. However, no study thus far has examined whether vegetarian diets reduce the risk of UTIs until now. A prospective study on the risk of urinary tract infection in vegetarians versus non-vegetarians. Well if around 20% are tied to retail chicken meat, no surprise that eating vegetarian is associated with around 20% lower risk of UTIs, particularly in women. And this association was independent of diseases and predisposing risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol, meaning it's not just due to the fact that vegetarians had less diabetes or something. What about buying organic chicken? Bacteria swapped from chicken labeled organic harbored less antibiotic resistant bacteria, but no, no less likely to be contaminated with expec UTI bacteria. These findings suggest that retail chicken products in the United States, even if they're labeled organic, pose a potential health threat to consumers because they're contaminated with extensively antibiotic resistant E. coli, including the ones that cause UTIs. To date, only the jack-in-the-box E. coli, like 015787, are considered food adulterants, meaning it's not legal to knowingly sell contaminated meat. Why don't they do the same with the expec bugs? Now that they're such strong evidence, they're infecting so many women. Well, in a survey of retail chicken breasts collected widely across the United States, 14.3% of the E. coli they found appeared to be expec. Given that E. coli can be found in about 90% of retail turkey and chicken products, that would mean the industry would have to dump literally billions of pounds of chicken breasts every year.