I hope every lawmaker on Capitol Hill had a chance to watch CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric’s two-part investigative series on the risks of using antibiotics as growth promoters in food animals. After viewing both pieces it would be difficult for most people to question the immediate need to pass the Preservation of Antibiotics [...]

Watch CBS News Videos OnlineIn the first installment of a two-part series, CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric investigates the connection between the use of antibiotics in factory farms and the incidence of MRSA in humans. Couric talks to a worker at an Arkansas poultry processing facility who developed MRSA; discusses the use overuse of [...]

Citing “drug residue” problems in shipments from U.S. pork producers, Russia has now banned imports of most pork produced in the United States by gradually disqualifying all but a handful of production plants, according to U.S. industry and government officials interviewed by Dow Jones newswires (see earlier article).
As of yesterday, Russia has now banned pork [...]

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Capitol Hill briefing, yesterday, on Industrial Animal Farms and Worker Health and Safety was informative and compelling. It was also contentious. While Dr. Steven Wing, University of North Carolina epidemiologist and environmental justice expert, discussed the transformation of agricultural practices over the last few decades he was interrupted by a Congressional [...]

The marvel of modern medicine is in jeopardy.  A growing pool of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, increasingly immune to our arsenal of prescription drugs, weighs heavily on our already-inflated health care budget.  Leading experts attribute much of the responsibility for this “Multi-Billion Dollar Health Care Crisis” to the practice of feeding low doses of antibiotics  to livestock [...]

Farmed catfish made news in November as Alabama Agriculture and Industries Commissioner Ron Sparks announced a ban on all untested fish from Vietnam and China due to antibiotic drug residues detected in imported catfish from those countries (Associate Press). Catfish from Vietnam (i.e. basa, tra, or pangasius all called “Vietnamese catfish”) and China’s channel catfish [...]

There’s an interesting opinion piece on CNN today-“Eating Animals is Making Us Sick”-by Jonathan Safran Foer, author of “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” It’s a great prelude to his upcoming book–his first nonfiction entry–called “Eating Animals.” The book will be available next week. Foer zooms in on antibiotic resistance and the [...]

by Amy Peterson, DVM, and Meghan Davis, DVM, MPH
In a Sept. 29th prepared floor statement, Senator Chuck Grassley spoke in response to an August 21st Time magazine article by Bryan Walsh.  An important point raised by Mr. Walsh concerned the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animals and the impact of use of antimicrobials on [...]

Today’s announcement by U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) introducing legislation to ban the use of the arsenical compound roxarsone once again shines the spotlight on the all-too common practice of the unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs in industrial animal production.
“American consumers simply shouldn’t have to ingest this arsenic compound when they sit at the kitchen [...]

The American Veterinary Medical Association’s recent “response” to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production’s final report on the state of industrial animal agriculture is disconcerting. It appears that leadership of the veterinary professional organization is attempting to misuse science to obfuscate and delay critically needed changes in the food animal production system rather [...]