The numbers released quietly by the federal government this year were alarming. A ferocious germ resistant to many types of antibiotics had increased tenfold on chicken breasts, the most commonly eaten meat on the nation’s dinner tables.
But instead of a learning from a broad national inquiry into a troubling trend, scientists said they were stymied by a lack of the most basic element of research: solid data.
Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States goes to chicken, pigs, cows and other animals that people eat, yet producers of meat and poultry are not required to report how they use the drugs — which ones, on what types of animal, and in what quantities…
Advocates contend that there is already overwhelming epidemiological evidence linking the two, something that even the Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged, and that further study, while useful for science, is not essential for decision making. “At some point the available science can be used in making policy decisions,” said Gail Hansen, an epidemiologist who works for Pew Charitable Trusts…
But scientists say the blank spots in data collection are a serious handicap in taking on powerful producers of poultry and meat who claim the link does not exist.
The Food and Drug Administration has tried in fits and starts to regulate the use of antibiotics in animals sold for food. Most recently it restricted the use of cephalosporins in animals — the most common antibiotics prescribed to treat pneumonia, strep throat and urinary tract infections in people.
But advocates say the agency is afraid to use its authority. In 1977, the F.D.A. announced that it would begin banning some agricultural uses of antibiotics. The House and Senate appropriations committees — dominated by agricultural interests — passed resolutions against any such bans, and the agency retreated…
Regulators say it is difficult even to check for compliance with existing rules. They have to look for the residue of misused or banned drugs in samples of meat from slaughterhouses and grocery stores, rather than directly monitoring use of antibiotics on farms. “We have all these producers saying, ‘Yes, of course we are following the law,’ but we have no way to verify that,” said Dr. Hansen…
All the “heroes” of both parties have walked away from any responsibility to get this sorted.
RTFA for more details – leading to the conclusions you must expect. Nothing is being done to mandate cooperation from the corporations making their profits from protein that walks around.
How many ‘Gee, Nice Cock’ comments can we get?
I don’t know but that dude has one giant one.
I can remember talking to the parent of one of my fifth grade girls, who has since done a stint in the military and had a child several years ago, about this issue and that we both concluded were going to end up rendering all our antibiotics useless.
Nothing of any note has been done about the problem since that conversation.
Combine this story with the one “study” released yesterday stating that their is virtually no benefit to organic foods over non-organic.
“Organic produce and meat typically isn’t any better for you than conventional varieties when it comes to vitamin and nutrient content, according to a new review of the evidence. ”
So who are they protecting? It’s a war on organic farms I tell ya.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/48888214/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/#.UEduHJYs784
You got sucked in by the Media hype machine. The study states that although the nutritional value of the organic food was not significantly higher the quantity of pesticides and preservatives was significantly reduced or in some cases eliminated.
So if you think the bug will stay away from you if you ingest pesticides then be my guest.
“So if you think the bug will stay away from you if you ingest pesticides then be my guest.”
Where did I say that I am for pesticides or non-organic foods? And BTW I am not buying into the nutritional value argument either.
As much as possible, I spend the extra money for organic foods, it’s not easy sometimes but I try.
If we regulate how many hormones job-giving companies can put into the meat we eat then we stifle business and the commies win!
We already have the FDA to regulate this, but they are corrupt so they need to go.
I’ll support effective regulation, but not the FDA, people need to use common sense and stop buying the crap foods.
The USDA and the FDA are not corrupt.
They are small, understaffed, under-resourced government departments created to protect the growers and producers.
They are not there for the consumer.
Those laws were enacted not to protect the public but to protect the other drug manufacturers who were making claims that could be proved to be effective, from the unscrupulous drug pushers who were selling spurious snake oil.
Its a perfect example of what Alfred Korzibski called a semantic anomaly or what has been more recently called systemantics
It is unfortunate that the USDA is not given that focus in terms of funds when in fact it is the very agency that check every food product before it reaches our tables.
I go for organic food, but it is more expensive than the regular products we can buy in supermarkets. Well, this is an issue that the government should revisit. Health care is important, but if there will be programs that will motivate people to go on healthier eating, then it may lessen the country’s spending for health care.
…people need to use common sense and stop buying the crap foods.
And the USDA and FDA regulated food processors don’t want to accurately label their products and remove the capacity for you to make any kind of informed decision.
You’re probably old enough to have heard George Carlin go on about the weasel word advertising description that make think one thing while actually saying nothing.
You’re likely buying some percentage of crap foods and you don’t even know it.
If the US food processors get their way, you’ll be eating pink slime made up of subsidized corn, HFCS* and all the left over bits of any animal that gets shredded and red dye #2.
HFCS is amazing stuff. The taste fools you into wanting more of it like a low level crack while your body is unable to process it and it gets encysted by adipose tissue.
America is not actually obese. It is malnourished.
They probably didn’t think of it.
Outside-the-box thinking often seems obvious in hindsight.
There was an article in the New York Times about organic foods that proved that scientists just get it.
The article said that they couldn’t find any added benefits to eating organic food, not realizing that its not about addition, its about subtraction.
People eat organic foods, eat raw whole milk and cheeses, or like to get free range chicken not for what is added, but instead for what isn’t added, viz: every kind of “cides”, antibiotics, growth hormones and denatured proteins that end up sticking to the food that nobody’s body can process or ignore.
Making things grow unnaturally is how cancers operate. Its called metastasis. (Think of that next time you bite into a processed-all-to-Hell and back McNugget or beef patty…)
Killing things through the use of an antibiotic agent doesn’t stop killing things just ’cause its picked. (Rinsing wont get rid of Round Up Ready™ anything because it baked into the genes. Its doesn’t even have to go that far. Peels are permeable. They are porous integument and let nutrients and air [and pesticides, fungicides etc.] through to the underlying flesh.)
If something kills bugs/fungi/whatever, what makes you think it wont kill you!
Lethality is just a matter of dosage and its controlled by the simple formula: sum of concentration divided by time, where sum is the sum of the residue which accumulates in our adipose tissue until is reaches the undesired toxicity.
Eventually, it hits the right dosage for anybody and everybody.
The again, maybe Cargill, DuPont de Neimours, Grissol, Merck, Monsanto and all the rest of the oligarchs know exactly what this has done to us all and are laughing all the way to the bank, (all of whom own large private farms by the way, [you’ve never had real vegetables in New York City until you have eaten some from the Rockefeller estate.])
Arrgh!! They just don’t get it, not get it.
Damn it; they don’t get it. (Sorry I’m typing too fast.)
Excellent insight/perspective on this issue…. and how often semantics molds the way we appreciate a subject.
Organics is also a lot about maintaining the process of production–ie–organic preserves and even makes the soil better, loss of top soil being an issue as well as damage by runoff of pesticides and what not==whole areas of the Gulf are sterile as a result. Reduced carbon foot print, buy/eat locally.
Lots of “other” issues support organics. biggest reason against organics?=====big business profits.
I always thought this was amusing.
Take a species well known as a source of common human flu strains.
House millions of them in large warm incubators.
Feed them massive doses of all the antibiotics we use on humans to treat the same diseases.
Then put them in large open sided trucks and drive them around on freeways so that the pellets are aerosolized and distributed across the countryside.
If we did this in another country it would be a war crime.
Oh no, a crisis in need of more government.
I buy locally grown organic produce as a matter of principle.
The produce costs more, but not that much more than produce trucked in from California.
I try to keep my cash circulating in the local economy. I eat at locally owned restaurants and trade at locally owned stores.
One dollar goes around several times in the local economy.
That sounds like commie talk.
Unless you add “Trillion” to each of those statements – then it’s fiscal stimulus.
It is the same mindset as toward vaccines. If it is of some national health use (and vaccines and antibiotics in general are) – there is absolutely no questioning allowed. Industry (biochemical and food) interest is just layered on that basic premise, it is secondary. Anyone who dares to question it is Crackpot who doesn’t think we landed on the Moon. And there is difference, overuse of biochemistry in food production is way worse ecological issue than any amount of CO2 while for the Moon landing I personally used equipment planted there by the first astronauts on the Moon, so sorry but questioning it is real crakpottery.
What we need are more regulations! Especially regulations that will force the small, organic-producing farms to document every detail and hire several oversight people (paid like government employees, of course) to see that it is all done properly. That’ll fix the problem!
You don’t care about what you eat huh?
“I demand the freedom to be poisoned at any point in the food chain so that others may live regulation free.”
The definition of a Big Business stooge.
Actually, you’re right.
All we need to do is destroy the USDA subsidy programs.
Of course, the wealthy land owners, the real oligarchs, won’t let that happen.
You might own a garden, they own entire states.
The whole point of antibiotics is that what they used to cure evolves making the antibiotic no longer effective. To keep our drugs/medicine effective, they should be used sparingly only when targeted at a speficially infected person.
Antibiotics are used generically in livestock production as a preventative. Something not done with humans but the effect will be the same: wonderdrugs made ineffective with only much more expensive modalities or no modalities to replace them.
This all has an accumulative effect to our group harm.
………………tick…………………..tock.
What is this?
An ad for the Watchmen? 🙂
Or maybe you’re channeling John Cameron Swayze and think its an ad for Tumex™, taking a licking and it keeps on ticking 🙂
Maybe it’s increasing our life expectancy.
Aren’t Chicken Breasts “rinses” in some kind of toilet at the slaughter house and then shipped “Fresh” to the StuporMarkets ???
He would win in one Hell of a Cock Fight..
Chicken contains a big quantity of protein therefore we eat chicken regularly, so that’s the major concern for us. Scientists have created the antibiotics of this problem that is good news for us, but they should inform us how to use these antibiotics and the right quantity of this antibiotic.