FDA Sued To Stop Antibiotic Abuse On Factory Farms 298
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Medical groups from the American Medical Association to the American Society of Microbiology have appealed to the government and industry for years to restrict the practice of providing sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics for livestock, lest critical antibiotics become useless for human treatments. Now Tom Laskawy reports that a coalition of environmental groups has decided to sue the Federal Drug Administration to follow its own safety findings and withdraw approval for most non-therapeutic uses of penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed to healthy livestock when it's not medically necessary. 'While this may cause eyerolls among some who look at this as "just another lawsuit," there's something very important going on with the courts and contested science right now,' writes Laskawy. 'As it happens, one of the main roles of a judge is as "finder of fact." In practice, this means that judges determine whether scientific evidence is compelling enough to force government action."'"
Finding of fact? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Finding of fact? (Score:5, Informative)
The contested part, as best I've been able to determine, is to what degree any of the antibiotic resistant strains is retained in beef flesh
That's not really contested. Scientist know you can cook food to kill organisms. Most should even be able to tell you why. The problem is how much of the antibiotic properties are retained in an environment where cattle (or other livestock), fed with antibiotic feed, poop and pee. In other words it doesn't matter if the strains in your meat are cooked if the 'environment' is constantly exposed to antibiotics then so are the bacteria that cause infection. Thus, when you get an infection from one of those bacteria, that's been waiting for a cut in your skin, it's already been exposed to the antibiotic. This is known to cause resistance.
The idea that there is any debate over properly cooked food being a vector for resistant bacteria is a straw man.
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:4, Informative)
Well that's your opinion and you're entitled to hold it. However you're very wrong:
1. GMOs create monocultures which could severely damage society by allowing for a majority of crop types to be of one kind. If something comes along which the plants have no resistance to and wipes out the majority of crops sold on the planet we're fucked.
2. GMOs are patented. When the GMOs seed and spread to fields which do not have GMOs the owner of the patent can sue the farmer for using a crop which they own the patent for even though it's a derivative created by natural processes. Those lawsuits are detrimental to the farmers and provide the creators of the GMO with unending amounts of cash because everyone has to use their products.
3. GMOs require more and more pesticides because they're built to only germinate when the pesticide is used. I don't care if you're hippy or not, pesticides are just as bad as the hormones and antibiotics we're finding.
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But hey, if you want to eat tasteless product created solely because it ships well and it requires pesticides to be purchased in order to grow so be it. It's your choice and I support that. However, I'll stick to my non-GMOs knowing that I'm supporting what we've used successfully for 1000s of years prior.
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:3, Informative)
1. GMOs create monocultures which could severely damage society by allowing for a majority of crop types to be of one kind. If something comes along which the plants have no resistance to and wipes out the majority of crops sold on the planet we're fucked.
That one doesn't even make sense. Genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. Biodiversity is what you grow. What you're saying is like saying conventional breeding creates monoculture because there are more potatoes than oca, more apples than jujubes, more mangoes than lychees, more wheat than tef, more lettuce than chaya, more numeg than rosita de cacao, ect ect ect. There are hundreds of crops that people like you don't know or care about. Genetic engineering didn't banish them, they were out of the picture when it got here. Same way with interspecies biodiversity. People have been eroding that for a long time, just look at non-GMO crops like tomatoes. Whan was the last time you went to the store and saw an Ananas Noire, White Tomesol, Kellogg's Breakfast, Carbon, Green Moldovian, or Huge Yellow Oxhart tomato? You didn't, and they're not even genetically modified. In fact, I'd wager to gues you don't even know what biodiversity is, know nothing of the huge number of biodiverse crops out there. and that's just some talking point you heard. And quite frankly, as a huge proponent of biodiversity myself, I'd appreciate if people like you would shut the hell up and stop making the rest of us look like scientifically illiterate morons. Those things I listed above? That's the COMMON stuff. If you had to look them up, and lets face it, you did, you don't have much business talking about it.
2. GMOs are patented. When the GMOs seed and spread to fields which do not have GMOs the owner of the patent can sue the farmer for using a crop which they own the patent for even though it's a derivative created by natural processes. Those lawsuits are detrimental to the farmers and provide the creators of the GMO with unending amounts of cash because everyone has to use their products.
Congratulations, you've discovered the Plant Patent. Welcome to 1930. [wikipedia.org] Is it right? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, I know of nothing stopping anyone from patenting a naturally occurring mutant gene, and furthermore, that's business, not science, so has no relevance to the merits of GMOs. That's like saying that the possibility of being sued for downloading something is relevant to the artistic merit of a work of music, film, or literature.
3. GMOs require more and more pesticides because they're built to only germinate when the pesticide is used. I don't care if you're hippy or not, pesticides are just as bad as the hormones and antibiotics we're finding.
Wow, when did that happen. Funny, all the time I've studied GMOs, the lectures I've gone to, I've never heard about that one. Sounds like a combination of bullshit and you not knowing what you're talking about. First, you're confusing herbicide and pesticide (well, insecticide), which means your opinions on agriculture are as valid as a the medical opinion of guy who uses liver and kidneys interchangeably. There are GMO crops that produce their own pesticides, and these have actually REDUCE the use of pesticides. This is a fact supported by pretty much every agriculturist on the planet, if you disagree with it, you are wrong, and no, some link to Greenpeace is not a valid rebuttal. There are also those that resist herbicides, meaning you can kill weeds without tilling. Look up no-till agriculture. It's a good thing. And what are you going on about when you talk of getting them to germinate? GMOs germinate just fine. Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that farmers don't save seed? Yeah, that's hybrid seed for you. Look up Punnett Square and heterosis and try to figure that one out for yourself. Joking. Farmers don't save that seed
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:0, Informative)
Go read up about Roundup Ready Monsanto products before you open your fucking mouth again. YOU are the clueless one here.
Re:Finding of fact? (Score:4, Informative)
The cases are lost in the US for one of two reasons. Either because the smoker should have known the danger (it's been printed on every pack for decades), or because the issues presented have been foreclosed by a combination of past judgements (e.g. the massive every-attorney-general-in-the-country vs every-major-tobacco-company case) and federal legislation.
The cases are not being lost on the merits, but on gating issues.
Re:Finding of fact? (Score:5, Informative)
Cigarette companies specifically advertised their brands as being the "healthy choice". They would claim to be endorsed by doctors and dentists the way toothpastes do now. They would claim that the filters made them safer, or that they used "mild" or "light" tobacco. They would get testimonials from famous athletes and opera singers, with the obvious subtext that these people are clearly healthy. Of course, the stars giving the testimonials often didn't actually smoke... but that's no different from most modern celebrity endorsements.
Here's some examples [time.com]. My favorite is the Lucky Strikes claiming endorsement by 20,679 physicians -- no more, no less!
Re:Is it proven? (Score:4, Informative)
Why do you accuse me of peddling dodgy treatments? Just google for zinc and cold.
It works better than placebo.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12462910 [bbc.co.uk]
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/for-cold-virus-zinc-may-edge-out-even-chicken-soup/ [nytimes.com]
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/ [nih.gov]
Stick to the pills/lozenges, take them at early onset of symptoms, don't overdose and definitely don't spray your nose with it (or you might damage/lose your sense of smell). May not be a cure, but most subjects would feel better and that's good enough for most people.
AFAIK doctors in some countries are still prescribing antibiotics to those with colds and flu. Despite being told year after year not to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/20/coughs-colds-cures-treatment-antibiotics [guardian.co.uk]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6526575/GPs-told-to-stop-prescribing-antibiotics-for-coughs-and-colds.html [telegraph.co.uk]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1574995/Stop-giving-antibiotics-for-colds-doctors-told.html [telegraph.co.uk]
My current guess (not enough proof yet :) ) that most people get antibiotic resistant bacteria from hospitals, not farms.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20524852 [nih.gov]
RESULTS:
Neither the preintervention rate of MRSA colonization or infection (0.56 cases per 1,000 patient-days [95% confidence interval {CI}, 0.49-0.62 cases per 1,000 patient-days]) nor the slope for the rate of MRSA colonization or infection changed significantly after the first intervention. The rate decreased significantly to 0.28 cases per 1,000 patient-days (95% CI, 0.17-0.40 cases per 1,000 patient-days) after the second intervention and to 0.07 cases per 1,000 patient-days (95% CI, 0.06-0.08 cases per 1,000 patient-days) after the third intervention, and the rate remained at a similar level for 8 years. The MRSA bacteremia rate decreased by 80%, whereas the rate of bacteremia due to methicillin-susceptible S. aureus did not change. Eighty-three percent of the MRSA isolates identified were clonally related. All MRSA isolates obtained from healthcare workers were clonally related to those recovered from patients who were in their care.
CONCLUSION:
Our data indicate that long-term control of endemic MRSA is feasible in tertiary care centers. The use of targeted active surveillance for MRSA in patients and healthcare workers in specific wards (identified by means of analysis of clinical epidemiology data) and the use of decolonization were key to the success of the program.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/718935 [medscape.com]
March 22, 2010 â" A multifaceted infection control program led to a significant decline in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) cases in Paris-area hospitals with high endemic MRSA rates, according to an article in the March 22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
There are other superbugs too:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/enemy_pr.html [wired.com]
It's true that many species of acinetobacter flourish widely in the environment. Thriving colonies have been recovered from soil, cell phones, frozen chicken, wastewater treatment plants, Formica countertops, and even irradiated food