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Jeff Bender is a professor of veterinary public health at the University of Minnesota, and his research interests lie in the intersection of animal health and human health, including animal-borne diseases of humans, food safety, and antibiotic resistant pathogens in animals.\\xa0 Dr. Bender will speak on \\u201cMethicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ( MRSA) in Veterinary Practice\\u201d at the American Society for Microbiology\\u2019s General Meeting in Philadelphia this May.

To a microorganism, vertebrates can all look pretty similar.\\xa0 Dr. Bender\\u2019s work focuses on pathogens that can make themselves at home in both human bodies and the bodies of our pets and livestock.\\xa0 Outbreaks of bacterial illnesses from meat products are well publicized these days, but the pathogens we have in common with animals don\\u2019t just travel in one direction.\\xa0 We humans can pass organisms and diseases to our animals, too.\\xa0 Dr. Bender says pets treated at veterinary clinics, for example, have come down with painful MRSA skin infections they picked up from their owners.\\xa0 Fluffy might become a temporary reservoir of MRSA in your home \\u2013 capable of reinfecting you and your family, but the good news is that she probably won\\u2019t be a long term carrier of the bacterium.

In this interview, Dr. Merry Buckley asks Dr. Bender about MRSA in pets, whether farmers often get sick from animal-borne diseases, and whether he thinks it\\u2019s a good idea to \\u201cgo organic\\u201d when shopping for food.