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."'"
About fracking time (Score:3, Insightful)
Next, maybe some of our environmental guardians will do something about fracking ...
Factory farming should stop, really (Score:5, Insightful)
While I completely agree, that regulations have to be a lot stronger about hormones, GM products and antibiotics, I would like to see this go a step further: ban factory farming as a practice. It is inhumane, produces an unhealthy product, outbreaks of infections, excessive pollution and unnecessary suffering. I suggest to watch "Food Inc, Meet your Meat, and Earthlings for the non-faint at heart, both of which talk about the subject from different viewpoints.
Re:About fracking time (Score:2, Insightful)
Next, maybe some of our environmental guardians will do something about fracking
I'm pretty sure the Republicans have that particular crusade sewn up already...
Re:Finding of fact? (Score:5, Insightful)
People can be amazingly adept at "contesting" science they don't like. See: creationism, vaccines causing autism, climate change denial, or (a few decades ago) cigarettes being harmless.
Re:Federal Drug Administration? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's one of the many government organizations staffed by executives from the companies that they regulate, so that they can facilitate the wishes of the corporations. For example, push through bovine growth hormone without due diligence and then have to reverse the decision years later, after it lead to far more contamination in the milk we drink as well as hideous "mutations" that can only be described as nightmarishly inhumane occurred in the cows themselves.
And, you know, then all the Monsanto evilness . . . since they have Monsanto executives in their mix. And the whole magic "now that we have people who are directly tied to the success of aspartame being approved sitting on the committee, we're going to go ahead and just approve aspartame" thing.
If the FDA ever does anything even remotely right, I can only assume it's done as a "okay, we're getting too much heat so lets at least do some token action to get people off our backs so we can continue being evil as shit".
Typical revolving door government, along the lines of "I"m Ken Lay and I run Enron and the president has just appointed me as security advisor and I'm going to advise that we deregulate energy to directly benefit my shady practices in fucking over California and manufacturing a non-existent energy crises so I can get rich".
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes I have watched at least a few of these movies myself.
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Then stop buying it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoa, back up there. Inhumane conditions are bad, that much is clear, and I totally agree that antibiotics are often abused, but factory farm != inhumane conditions Factory farming typically refers to CAFOs, and that has nothing do do with how the animals are raised, but actually just the number. It gets a bad rap, but no small amount of them are just family farms (even some of the big ones) that do, indeed, treat their animals fairly well [iafarmwife.com]. It's like the spinach E. coli outbreak; one jackass lets his cattle get too close to the irrigation source and the entire spinach industry takes a hit over it. Yeah, there is animal cruelty, a lot of it, but I don't think it's the norm, so don't blame factory farms in general any more than you should attack free range farming because some organic idiots treat treat sick animals with homeopathy (no medicine could also be considered inhumane). Factory farms are mostly about efficiency, and that is no vice, nor in producing less output a virtue. Sorry, they're not. You want to pay more for something that uses more land, fine my me, but unless every so-called factory farm is abusing their animals (hint, they're not) I'll take efficient and cheap thank you. Before you paint everyone with that big brush, maybe you should learn something about agriculture beyond some bullshit movie with all the credibility of Loose Change. That you are concerned about hormones [youtube.com] and GMOs [psu.edu] indicates to me that such films are your primary source of information and you know very little about modern agriculture and agricultural technology.
Especially GMOs, jeez, can we as a society get over that one? It's just a way of improving a plant, it isn't Frankenstein or Jurassic Park or Splice or whatever fairy tale people are believing over science today, and contrary to the perpetual moaning of unscientific denialists like Greenpeace, they are actually a gain for the environment (Bt GMOs reduce pesticide use and Ht GMOs prevent fertilizer runoff, reduces soil erosion and promotes carbon sequestering via no/low-till ag) and not dangerous [blogspot.com] to humans. And we can talk about the politics of Monsanto all day long, but that is not relevant to the benefits GMOs provide.or mean GMOs are dangerous any more than Merck or Pfizer's unethical decisions mean that vaccines cause autism.
And watching Food Inc. to get different perspectives on agriculture is like listening to Michael Behe to get different viewpoints on evolution. Different points of view are good, but sometimes they're just wrong. That movie made some good points, but was mostly foodie nonsense and bogus FUD. [scienceblogs.com] What's amazing is that all those foodie idiots lapped that up, but when a real agriculturalist talks about real farming then they just go into dismiss it. I truly love that society in developed nations runs so smoothly that we don't need to produce our own food, that labor is nicely divided that people like people can go on about something they've never done or been involved with, but people really should know a bit more about where their food comes from, how it's produced, and why farmers do it that way so that they won't go into panic mode every time some bored art history major throws together a few film clips.
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily. Let's assume that what you say is true. $30 for chicken is probably 6x the normal price. So, what would happen if food costs were 6x across the board?
Some US Census data:
Population estimate for 2009 is 307M
Per capita income $21.5k in 1999
Total household income = $6.6T
Recent survey showed about 10% of that is spent on food = $660B. Impact to economy of 6x higher prices is about $3T.
I doubt the US spends $3T annually on cases of hemorrhagic e. coli.
Now, of course that chicken won't really be $30, but the impact to the economy of even a modest food price increase is enormous. So, safety at any cost is a foolish policy. When that infant formula costs more maybe those little babies will get a little less of it - and what is the health impact of that?
It's a money thing, not stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not stupidity as much as a money thing. Let's weigh an unseen evil (factory farms) against paying 30% more for meat, when most dual-income families are barely making ends meet as it is. It's a no brainer.
Same argument goes for "Made in USA" btw.
Re:Factory farming should stop, really (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming you don't live in Ethiopia or Cambodia or some other -ia where that's obviously a legitimate concern, what do you mean by "good water"? I have clean drinking water on tap for pennies a gallon, I consider that some pretty good fuckin water. Am I missing out?
Is it proven? (Score:4, Insightful)
> For colds they'd be better off taking a zinc supplement at the onset of the symptoms.
Is it proven this works?
Why do you ask for proof when you yourself peddle dodgy alternative type remedies?
In any case colds are caused by viruses, and nobody who knows what an antibiotic is ever claimed it worked for those.