Antimicrobial resistance in meat and meat products from Asia: An urgent one health challenge- a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: The increasing demand for animal protein poses a significant public health challenge because of the associated burden of foodborne diseases and antimicrobial resistance. Objective: This study aimed to address the pooled prevalence of bacterial pathogens and their AMR patterns with associated genes found in meat and its products across Asia. Methods: One hundred thirty-four relevant studies published between 2015 and 2025 were identified using major scientific electronic databases and selected on the basis of the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted in Microsoft Excel, and STATA (v19) and R programming (v4.4.2) were used for the analyses. A random effects model was applied for the pooled prevalence at the 95 % CI to account for substantial heterogeneity. Results: The pooled prevalence of Escherichia coli (E. coli), Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), Klebsiella spp., Campylobacter spp., and Enterococcus spp. isolates from the meat and meat products were 49.6 %, 31.7 %, 38.1 %, 21.3 %, 30.7 %, and 46.9 %, respectively. The highest prevalence of isolated bacteria was from pigeons (39.3 %), followed by chickens. Similarly, E. coli was the most frequent pathogen and was highly resistant to ampicillin (79.7 %). S. aureus (84.7 %) and Klebsiella spp. (97.7 %) also exhibited strong resistance to ampicillin, while Salmonella spp. showed high resistance to oxytetracycline (71.3 %). Moreover, the most prevalent AMR genes across the studies were tetA, blaTEM, blaCTX, sul1, blaSHV, and mcr1. Conclusion: The findings revealed increasing pathogen resistance to common antibiotics, highlighting the need for better antibiotic stewardship, monitoring, public awareness, and effective treatment strategies to address this growing threat.