 Millions of Americans come down with bladder infections, urinary tract infections, every year, including more than a million children. Most cases stay in the bladder, but when the bacteria creep up into the kidneys or get into the bloodstream, things can get serious. Thankfully, we have antibiotics. But there's now a pandemic of a new multi-drug-resistant strain of E. coli, discovered just in 2008, and now the so-called ST131 strain went from unknown to a leading cause of bladder infections the world over, resistant to even some of our second- and third-line antibiotics. And it's been found in chicken, retail chicken breasts sampled from across the country, documenting a persisting reservoir of extensively antimicrobial-resistant X-PEC bacteria, the extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli, including the ST131 strain in retail chicken products in the United States, suggesting a potential public health threat. See, urinary tract infections may be food-borne, by which they mean predominantly poultry, chicken, and turkey, so maybe we shouldn't be feeding antibiotics to these animals by the ton in poultry production. But wait, food-borne bladder infections? What are you doing with that drumstick? No eating contaminated chicken can lead to the colonization of the rectum with these bacteria that can then even months later crawl up into the bladder to cause an infection. The problem of increasing antimicrobial resistance is so dire that some experts are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill. More than 80% of E. coli isolated from beef, pork, and poultry exhibited resistance to at least one antibiotic, and more than half from poultry resistant to five different drugs. One of the ways this happens is that viruses called bacteriophages can transfer antibiotic-resistant genes between bacteria. About a quarter of these viruses isolated from chicken meat were found able to transduce antibiotic drug resistance into E. coli. And one of the big problems with this is that disinfectants used to kill bacteria are in many cases not able to eliminate these viruses. Some of these viruses are even resistant to bleach at the kinds of concentrations used in the food industry. And likewise alcohol, which is what you find in many hand sanitizers, also unable to harm most of them. The irony is that the industry has tried to intentionally feed these viruses to chickens. Why would they do that? It can boost egg production and hence an increased body weight gain in broiler chickens to get them to slaughter weight faster. The only thing that seems to dissuade the industry is if anything affects the taste of the meat. That's why the industry had to stop spraying chickens with benzene to try to kill off all the parasites. The meat ended up with a distasteful flavor described as strong, acidic, musty, medicinal, biting, objectionable, and tasty. But what if you buy organic chicken? For another type of bacteria, endococcus, antibiotic resistant bugs were found in both conventional and organically raised chicken, but were less common in organic. Only about one in three contaminated with drug resistant bugs compared to nearly one in two. But in a study of hundreds of prepackaged retail chicken breasts tested from 99 grocery stores, being labeled organic or antibiotic free did not seem to impact the contamination levels of antibiotic resistant E. coli from fresh retail chicken, though purchasing meat from natural food stores appeared to be safer regardless of how it was labeled. Kosher chicken appeared to be the worst, nearly twice the level of antibiotic resistant E. coli contamination compared to conventional, which goes against the whole concept of kosher. No difference in drug resistance between the E. coli swab from conventional chicken versus organic and raised without antibiotic chicken, but either way, kosher was worse. But how could organic and raised without antibiotic chicken not be better? Well, it could be cross-contamination at the slaughter plant, so bugs just jumped from one to the other. Or it could be the organic chicken loophole. USDA organic standards prohibits the use of antibiotics and poultry starting on day two of the animal's life. This is an important loophole, since even antibiotics considered critical for human health are routinely injected into one day old chicks and eggs, which has been directly associated with antibiotic resistant foodborne infections. And there was no difference in the presence of X-Bect bacteria to an organic and conventional, the bacteria implicated in urinary tract infections. 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. And even if we were able to get the poultry industry to stop using antibiotics, the contamination of chicken meat with X-Bect bacteria could still remain a threat.