Last Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted data on antimicrobial drug sales collected under the Animal Drug User Fee Act (ADUFA). ADUFA requires drug companies to report information on sales of antimicrobial drugs intended for use in animals, including food animals. These data provide the most reliable information we have on the use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture. CLF’s Ralph Loglisci and David Love, PhD, used 2009 ADUFA data to calculate the quantity of antimicrobial drugs used in food animal production in that year as a percentage of the total amount of antimicrobial drugs used in the U.S. over the same period—the number, they determined, was almost 80 percent!
The data that FDA posted on its website (October 28) was a PDF that contained sales data for 2010. These data showed a significant increase in antimicrobial drug sales—almost 7 percent. But a funny thing must have happened over the weekend. Read More >
An article just out in Clinical Microbiology Reviews should put to rest the hotly contested debate about antimicrobial misuse in industrial food animal production (IFAP). The review article, “Food Animals and Antimicrobials: Impacts on Human Health,” written by Bonnie Marshall and Stuart Levy of the Tufts University School of Medicine, provides one of the most comprehensive summaries to-date of the evidence linking antimicrobial misuse in IFAP to increased incidence of antimicrobial-resistant infections in humans, and it should silence accusations made by elected officials who contend that there is insufficient evidence to support restrictions on antimicrobial use in agriculture.
These accusations have grown louder in recent months. In June of this year, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have prohibited the Food and Drug Administration from spending money to restrict the use of antimicrobials in the absence of “hard science.” The “hard science amendment,” poorly written and clumsily introduced, was stripped from the legislation before it passed the House. But the arguments presented by Rehberg and other members nevertheless reveal a strident—and unwarranted—skepticism of existing scientific knowledge about antimicrobial resistance. Read More >
In 2009, China produced 450 million pigs
China has announced that it will join the European Union in banning the use of antimicrobial growth promoters (AGPs) in food animal production, WattAgNet.com reports. When implemented, the ban could affect food animal production throughout the country. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated Chinese production at more than 4.7 billion chickens, 450 million pigs, and 84 million cattle in 2009, the most recent year for which data are available. This is clearly big news.
The use of AGPs in food animal production has long been a concern in the public health and medical communities. The administration of non-therapeutic doses of antimicrobials to increase animals’ growth rates has been found repeatedly to select for resistant bacteria. The practice could even induce mutations that make bacteria previously susceptible to antibiotics become resistant to them. Read More >
The prospect of a ban on the Maryland poultry industry’s use of arsenic-based drugs has become more complicated with a request by Delegate Maggie McIntosh (D–Maryland House of Delegates, District 43) and Senator Joan Carter Conway (D–Maryland State Senate, District 43) for a review of the scientific literature on the environmental effects of arsenic-based drugs in poultry. As a medical doctor and epidemiologist, I am disappointed that Delegate McIntosh and Senator Conway have not contracted with a research body with the capacity to assess potential human health hazards of Roxarsone and other arsenical drugs used by the Maryland poultry industry.
In their request, McIntosh and Conway have asked the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology to conduct the literature review and submit a report to the Maryland General Assembly (the scope of the study can be found here). As the Hughes Center states in their Scope of Work (read Scope of Work Hughes Center 2011 here),“We are not public health/human health experts and therefore cannot comment on concerns in these areas.” Read More >
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 >
