North Carolinians: The conversation on antibiotic use in livestock production reaches home! Did you realize that we’re #2 in the country for hog and turkey production? Wow. PS: I’m a native NC’n.
FDA’s First Move Against Livestock Antibiotic Dosing
2012 begins with a little hope for improved livestock production - The FDA announced that it will set policies to limit the use of the antibiotic cephalosporins in animal food production by banning the extra label (ie: unapproved) use of the drug.
While any showing by the FDA to limit antibiotic use is good, the class of cephalosporins only represents less than 0.25% of antibiotic use in farm animal production. A drop in the bucket considering that over 70% of antibiotics consumed in the US are fed or given to farm animals - representing a market currently worth over US$8B.
Industry interests in the pharmaceutical sector are clear, but that number doesn’t touch on the billions raked in by companies whose meat production practices rely on heavy antibiotic doses used in animal farming in the name of food safety.
Still, as the Pew Trust applauds, it is still a step in the right direction.
NY Rep. Slaughter: Fighting for your health in the House
Representative Louise Slaughter continues to impress with her straightforward semantics on the use of antibiotics in farm animal production. Let’s hope the rest of Congress stops avoiding a ban on a practice that knowingly increases serious worldwide disease risks.
“To the [New York Times] Editor:
Re “The High Cost of Cheap Meat” (editorial, June 3), about the looming public health danger posed by the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms, an issue I’ve been working on for years:
The Food and Drug Administration must take steps to reduce the needless use of antibiotics in healthy animals and preserve their effectiveness for human beings.
Unfortunately, House Republicans are threatening to cripple the F.D.A.’s ability to keep our food safe and to regulate tobacco — along with a whole host of other public health threats — through an agriculture appropriations bill this year.
It is time for Congress to stand with scientists, the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association and take action to prevent the spread of resistant bacteria. The long-term public-health costs of returning to an era before antibiotics are simply too high to ignore.
LOUISE SLAUGHTER
Rochester, June 8, 2011
The writer, a microbiologist, is a member of Congress representing New York’s 28th District.”
More support for the ban of Antibiotics in meat production
Meat Contamination and Use of Antibiotics
“Researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research center in Phoenix, analyzed 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey from 80 brands. The samples came from 26 grocery stores in five cities: Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Flagstaff, Ariz., and Washington, D.C.
About half — 47% of the samples — contained S. aureus, the researchers reported Friday in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Of those bacteria, 52% were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. DNA testing suggested the animals were the source of contamination. The research was funded by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming…
Antibiotics are routinely given to livestock to promote growth and prevent disease in crowded pens…
About 11,000 people die every year from S. aureus infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half of those deaths are from the hospital “superbug” methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA).”
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
