Leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it abundantly clear last week that the low-dose usage of antibiotics in food animals, simply to promote growth or improve feed efficiency, needlessly contributes to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and poses a serious threat to public health. Despite the fact that the FDA is taking a hard-line stance on the issue, I find it frustrating to see that the agency appears to be hamstrung from taking the necessary steps to mandate industry end the risky practice. Even more exasperating is that it appears that the FDA may actually relax a current directive that already regulates antibiotic use. However, unlike many critics, I don’t believe that this is an example of the Obama administration buckling under industry pressure. Rather, I view it as a loud and stern call for Congress to take action. Producers concerned more about profit than protecting public health are not going to cut their dependence on non-therapeutic antibiotic use in food animals unless lawmakers pass strict legislation.
How food animals are given medication can be very different from how you take medication. While humans are prescribed antibiotics at specific dosages in pills or injections, food animals are often given antibiotics mixed in their feed and freely choose how much to consume. These free-choice medicated feeds (FCMF) make it difficult to deliver an intended or predictable dose of antibiotics to food animals. The result can be disastrous; under-administration of antibiotics leads to unresolved infections and contributes to the development of antimicrobial resistance, while over-administration can cause animal toxicity and increase drug residues in meat and milk.
A new commentary in Environmental Health Perspectives, lead authored by Dave Love, PhD, CLF’s project director of Aquaculture and Environmental Public Health, sheds light on the practice of administering antibiotics in FCMF. The Food and Drug Administration has approved 685 drugs for medicated feed, many of which are consumed on a free-choice basis, according to Dr. Love, who looked into the practice with co-authors Meghan Davis, DVM, MPH a CLF Pre-doctoral Fellow and Sommer Scholar, Anna Bassett, Lead Technical Auditor and Andrew Gunther, Program Director of Animal Welfare Approved, an organization which audits and certifies family farms on the basis of humane animal husbandry, and senior author Keeve Nachman, PhD, MHS, Director of CLF’s Farming for the Future Program.
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 for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA). PAMTA would effectively end the practice of administering constant low doses of antibiotics important to human health in food animals in the hopes of reducing the spread of antibiotic-resistant diseases among the general public. As we mentioned Tuesday, the first installment of the series highlighted the connections between industrial food animal production and the growing number of antibiotic resistant infections across the country.Couric’s second installment dismantled several arguments which critics of PAMTA often use to dissuade passage. I’ll point out just two.
First, the report puts to rest the deceptive claims by PAMTA opponents who point to outdated data from Denmark that they say proves an antibiotic-ban in the U.S. would hurt farmers. Opponents allude that the Danish ban on non-therapeutic antibiotics in food animals was a failure, claiming the numbers show the ban increased the mortality of piglets and required the increase of therapeutic antibiotic usage to treat sick pigs. Couric’s second report opened in Denmark, focusing on the “Danish Experience.” Farmers and researchers there tell a much different story. Couric interviewed Danish hog farmer Soren Helmer, who said, “We thought we could not produce pigs as efficient as we did before. But that was proven wrong.” Couric reported, “since the ban the Danish pork industry has grown by 43 percent making it one of the top exporters in the world.”
As I pointed out in an earlier blog post, Danish scientists, from the National Food Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, Drs. Frank Møller Aarestrup and Henrik Wegener, submitted last July written testimony for a U.S. House Committees Rules hearing on PAMTA. They wrote, “As you may be aware, representatives of organizations funded by U.S. agri-business have criticized and mis-represented the facts on the Danish ban of antibiotics since its inception.” The scientists found that the total antibiotic use for pork decreased by 50% and that piglet deaths initially increased, but after improving animal living conditions those numbers have since dipped below pre-ban numbers. Read More >
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 antibiotics on the farm with Shelley Hearne, managing director of the Pew Health Group at The Pew Charitable Trusts; and tells viewers about a University of Iowa study, which found a new strain of MRSA — in nearly three-quarters of hogs (70%), and nearly two-thirds of the workers (64%) — on several farms in Iowa and Western Illinois. All of them use antibiotics, routinely. On antibiotic-free farms no MRSA was found. Couric also talks with Iowa hog farmer Dave Kronlage who admits he uses antibiotics to accelerate growth and fend off disease. The CBS web site contains the expected statements from the National Pork Producers Council, the National Pork Board, and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Tomorrow night CBS Evening News will feature part two of the series, which focuses on Denmark’s ban on antibiotic use.
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 produced in 20 slaughterhouses owned by such companies as Smithfield Foods, Hatfield Quality Meats, Pork King Packing and Tyson Foods, the wire service says, citing a list maintained by USDA. Seven more pork-processing facilities have been disqualified in less than a month, effectively eliminating the remaining U.S. facilities that can export to Russia, the number five market for U.S. pork. Read More >
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 staffer who took issue with Wing’s statement that many of the family farms are disappearing and being replaced by industrial food animal operations. The interruption was brief, but the issue of “family farms” was raised again during the question and answer session.
Several briefing attendees claimed that their families had owned farming operations for generations, some of whom now run confinement livestock operations, also known as industrial food animal production (IFAP) facilities. Tensions grew when two attendees boisterously expressed their beliefs that even though many family farmers have shifted their farming practices to industrial models that they are still technically running family farms.
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 in order to expediate growth. Fortunately, Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has a plan that may serve as the first step towards solving this problem.
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 contained residues of fluoroquinolones, a group of antibiotics prohibited by the FDA in fish or seafood.
Though catfish may look cute, aquaculture-raised channel catfish are big business in the Southeast United States fetching over $400 million in 2003 and accounting for 46% of the value of all domestic aquaculture (Miss State Extension Service). In 2006, the US produced about 560 million tons of catfish, compared to about 28 million tons of imported catfish from Vietnam and China in the same year (Associated Press), which is beginning to create a rivalry between US producers and imports.
The recent ban on imported Vietnamese and Chinese catfish in Alabama could represent a move to regain control of the US catfish market. The Catfish Farmers of America have taken out advertisements in the Washington Post and Politico urging Congress to improve testing of imported fish.Reading between the line in catfish industry statements, it is hard to tell whether the true motivation is consumer safety (due to exposure to antimicrobial residues in fish fillets) or protecting domestic catfish market share— or both (Associated Press). Read More >
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 whopping volume of antibiotics fed to farm animals-17.8 million pounds! He also discusses the link between factory farms and the H1N1 outbreak. “Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn’t be more lucid,” he writes. “The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America’s most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.”
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 the emergence of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. The PEW commission report on industrial food animal production (IFAP) cites several studies supporting a connection between the use of antimicrobials and development of drug resistance in both pathogenic (disease-causing) and non-pathogenic bacteria on and around industrial animal farms. A major component of Senator Grassley argument is captured in his quote of a response to the PEW report released by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) on August 17th. The response states that “[a] scientific human/animal nexus, connecting antimicrobial treatments in animals with foodborne or environmentally-contracted human disease, has not been proven.” Read More >
Leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made it abundantly clear last week that the low-dose usage of antibiotics in food animals, simply to promote growth or improve feed efficiency, needlessly contributes to the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and poses a serious threat to public health. Despite the fact that the FDA is taking a hard-line stance on the issue, I find it frustrating to see that the agency appears to be hamstrung from taking the necessary steps to mandate industry end the risky practice. Even more exasperating is that it appears that the FDA may actually relax a current directive that already regulates antibiotic use. However, unlike many critics, I don’t believe that this is an example of the Obama administration buckling under industry pressure. Rather, I view it as a loud and stern call for Congress to take action. Producers concerned more about profit than protecting public health are not going to cut their dependence on non-therapeutic antibiotic use in food animals unless lawmakers pass strict legislation.
channel catfish :: 
