The pork and beef industries are having a field day with the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on antibiotic resistance—and they are distorting the findings dramatically. Both industries are saying that the GAO found insufficient evidence to link antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans. But what the report really tells us is that the FDA and USDA are not doing a good enough job collecting data on the connection between antibiotic use and resistance.
Two years ago, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D–NY) asked the GAO, the impartial research arm of Congress, to look into the efforts of two federal agencies (FDA and USDA) to curb antibiotic resistance that results from the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in food animal production. The GAO’s mandates included an examination of the extent to which these federal agencies are collecting data on the issue, as well as examinations of lessons learned by FDA and regulators in Denmark and the European Union. I think it’s very important to note that Rep. Slaughter did not ask the GAO to evaluate the extensive scientific literature connecting the use of antibiotics in food animal production to antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. Read More >
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
As Congress returns to work this week, the Pew Health Group and a dozen other scientific, medical, and public health organizations have submitted a joint letter aimed at senators, representatives, legislative staffers and the FDA. The letter, titled “Sound Science: Antibiotic Use in Food Animals Leads to Drug Resistant Infections in People,” is a renewed clarification of the state of scientific knowledge concerning ways in which industrial food animal production (IFAP) contributes to human antibiotic resistance.
Those familiar with the antibiotic resistance issue will recognize the case that the letter makes for ending the misuse of antibiotics in food animals. While the letter makes a clear and solid case for rethinking the use of antibiotics in food animals, I’d like to make some additional points. First, given their close contact with animals and animal waste in the workplace, employees of IFAP facilities are the ones at greatest risk for becoming infected with drug-resistant pathogens. Also, IFAP sites degrade the communities in which they’re sited by contaminating air, water and soils with an extensive variety of site-origined biological and chemical hazards, and by creating indelible rifts in the social fabric that once tied many of these rural communities together. Further, research has demonstrated that these phenomena often occur in low-income communities of color—in many cases, at the expense of people who are not empowered to defend themselves against the injustices they face. Read More >
The newest superbug in town is Salmonella Heidelberg, and the USDA has issued words of caution to U.S. consumers and instructions for proper meat handling—but it needs to press for reform in agricultural practices, as well.
The CDC has identified S. Heidelberg as “resistant to many commonly prescribed antibiotics,” and so far the outbreak, which is linked to ground turkey, has sickened 77 people in 26 states and killed one person in California. (The CDC has not specified the drugs to which this Salmonella strain is resistant.)
The emergence of the antibiotic-resistant strain prompted the USDA last Friday to issue a public health alert urging consumers to use caution when handling ground turkey, and to cook all poultry products to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. And today, meat processing firm Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation voluntarily recalled 36 million pounds of its ground turkey products. (For details on Cargill’s decision to suspend ground turkey production at its Arkansas facility, read yesterday’s New York Times and Mother Jones articles.) Read More >
For whom does the USDA work? A recent development involving a vanished technical review makes me wonder if the agency is working to assure a safe and nutritious food supply for the U.S. citizenry, or to protect the profits of the agro-industrial complex.
Tom Philpott did a great job covering the turn of events in a Mother Jones article published on Friday. In a nutshell, the USDA asked Vaishali Dharmarha, a Food Safety Information Specialist at U.S. Department of Agriculture/University of Maryland, to summarize recent academic findings on the link between antibiotic resistant bacterial infections (such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA) and industrial farm animal production. The agency blessed the report, which summarized research from 63 academic papers, as peer-reviewed, scientific, and scholarly. And then they quashed it.
Read More >
Mark Bittman, whose regular food systems columns in the New York Times are an excellent source of thoughtful commentary on the ills of industrialized agriculture, commented last month on the odd-couple arrangement brokered by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP). It’s worth noting that on the same day that the UEP and HSUS announced their partnership, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) issued a nervous response rife with scare tactics.
Here is an excerpt from their July 7 statement: “NPPC is gravely concerned that such a one-size-fits-all approach will take away producers’ freedom to operate in a way that’s best for their animals, make it difficult to respond to consumer demands, raise retail meat prices and take away consumer choice, devastate niche producers and, at a time of constrained budgets for agriculture, redirect valuable resources from enhancing food safety and maintaining the competitiveness of U.S. agriculture to regulating on-farm production practices for reasons other than public health and welfare.” Read More >
Today there is good news for the 280 million hens involved in egg production.
United Egg Producers (UEP) has partnered with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), agreeing to work together toward legislation of national standards to be used in egg production. This legislation, if enacted, would make history as the first federal law addressing the treatment of animals on farms, whose need for protection has escalated dramatically with the onset of the CAFO era.
The proposed legislation would raise standards for egg-layers considerably and comprehensively. One of the key actions of the bill would be to phase out conventional housing for hens, also known as “battery cages,” by implementing more humane environments. The legislation would also mandate that egg cartons be clearly labeled regarding production methods (“eggs from caged hens,” “eggs from hens in enriched cages,” “eggs from cage-free hens,” and “eggs from free-range hens”). Other humane measures would be affected as well, legislating practices involving euthanasia, forced-molting, and ammonia levels in the henhouses. The Humane Society’s press release provides further details. Read More >
As millions of Americans gear up this weekend for holiday barbecues and a cornucopia of grilled meats, TIME magazine has drawn attention to cruelty in the pork industry. The article, “Animal Cruelty: Barbaric Pig-Handling Video Could Ensnare Major Grocery Chains,” discusses recently released undercover video footage of an Iowa pig farm, a contract grower for Iowa Select Farms, and the retailers that sell its pork (Costco, Safeway, Kroger and Hy-Vee).
"Concealed Cruelty"
The video, titled “Concealed Cruelty” and published by the advocacy group Mercy for Animals, is graphic and disturbing. In it, we see piglets transferred to pens by “tossing,” euthanized by having their heads slammed on the concrete floor, and castrated without anesthesia, pigs laid low by herniated intestines and pus-filled wounds, and mother sows confined to gestation crates and suffering from uterine prolapse. The TIME reporter calls the video “horrific,” and, in considering its legitimacy, suggests that there’s no reason to doubt its authenticity. The article also references the 2008 Pew Commission report, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America,” which CLF researchers helped to author. In particular, TIME quotes the report: “The most intensive confinement systems, such as restrictive veal crates, hog gestation pens, restrictive farrowing [or pig-birthing] crates, and battery cages for poultry, all prevent the animal from a normal range of movement and constitute inhumane treatment.” Read More >
Earlier this week, CLF’s Robert S. Lawrence, MD, and Keeve Nachman, PhD, kicked off the Center for a Livable Future’s countdown to Food Day with a webinar, “Industrial food animal production and the high-meat American diet: health and environmental consequences.” (Audio; slides).
October 24, 2011, will be the first inaugural Food Day, a grassroots movement that promotes a healthy, sustainable, and just food system. In support of this nationwide campaign, organizations across the country will orchestrate events ranging from food-policy lectures to protests of junk-food stores to local, sustainable dinners and garden-building. Michael Jacobson, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), is leading the effort. Read More >
Last week, Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) took an important stand in support of America’s health by reintroducing the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (S. 1211). The bill aims to prevent the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture to ensure their continued effectiveness in the treatment of both human and animal diseases. Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are co-sponsoring, and the bill has been referred to the Senate Committee of Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has been the major champion for PAMTA in the House and has made several attempts to push the bill forward. She reintroduced it this year, and in March it entered the House Subcommittee on Health.
In her introduction, Sen. Feinstein explained the significance of the bill, particularly its role in protecting public health. Currently, about 80% of all antibiotics sold are for livestock, mostly for nontherapeutic purposes. Approximately 74% of these antibiotics are administered through feed containing low doses. This provides imprecise and inconsistent drug dosing that can result in drug resistance amongst surviving bacteria. Unfortunately, these resistant microbes can travel to humans and cause serious illnesses that are no longer treatable with standard antibiotics. Read More >
A new technical review by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “A Focus on Antimicrobial Resistance,” calls the issue a growing public health concern worldwide, stating the misuse of antimicrobial drugs in food animal production and human medicine is the main factor accelerating antimicrobial resistance.
The USDA report, in the National Agriculture Library, is a compilation of research from 63 scholarly and peer reviewed journals, including research supported by the Center for a Livable Future. It says limiting the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in animals agriculture can be achieved by:
- Understanding the risks and benefits of antimicrobial use in food animals.
- Development and implementation of principles guiding appropriate antimicrobial use in the food animal production.
- Improvement in animal husbandry and food production practices to reduce the dissemination of AMR.
- Development of regulations for prudent use of antimicrobials in food animals.
- Development of testing and reporting protocols for drug-resistant foodborne pathogens by regulatory agencies.
- Reduction in the usage of antimicrobials that are “critically important” for human medicine in food animals.
According to data released last December by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 80% (or 28.8 million pounds) of the antibiotics sold in 2009 were used to raise livestock and poultry.
In an article in last Saturday’s New York Times, “When Food Kills,” Columnist Nicholas Kristoff calls attention to the ongoing E. coli outbreak in Europe, noting 325,000 people are hospitalized from food-borne illnesses each year. “We have an industrial farming system that is a marvel for producing cheap food, but lobbyists block initiatives to make food safer,” writes Kristoff. “Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of our agricultural system….is the way antibiotics are recklessly stuffed into healthy animals to make them grow faster.”
Kristoff calls for more testing and education about E. coli adding, “a great place to start reforms would be banning the feeding of antibiotics to healthy livestock.”
