Many Americans assume the meat they buy at the grocery store is safe—but new data shows that approximately 36% of retail meat samples nationwide are contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria. And with the FDA and USDA facing major budget cuts, efforts to monitor pathogens, investigate outbreaks, and enforce safety standards could be weakened.
A new report from Trace One ranks states by their relative retail meat contamination risk, using the latest data from the FDA’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS). It also analyzes contamination trends by meat type, and highlights antibiotic resistance patterns.
Because the analysis focuses only on meat-pathogen combinations consistently tested across all participating states, the contamination rates below reflect a standardized subset of retail meat samples from the NARMS program. Researchers used these to calculate a composite retail meat risk index for each state, with higher scores indicating greater contamination risk.
Retail Meat Contamination Rates in New York State
- Chicken is Most Contaminated Meat in New York State: 24.4% of retail chicken samples tested positive for Salmonella or Campylobacter in New York State, as did 18.4% of ground turkey.
- Beef and Pork Contamination Rates: Ground beef tested positive for Salmonella in 0.0% of samples, and 5.0% of pork chops.
- New York State Sees 9th Highest Relative Risk: Based on these contamination rates, New York State receives a composite score of 54.75—the 9th highest retail meat contamination risk relative to all states in the analysis.
The full report covers 22 U.S. states with complete data available, with a detailed breakdown of bacterial contamination rates in retail meat by type and pathogen, along with a composite retail meat risk index, for each state.