UK Milk Supply Contains New MRSA Strain 179
Tests on milk from several different farms across the U.K. have turned up evidence for a new strain of MRSA — bacteria which have evolved resistance to common antibiotics. As long as the milk is properly pasteurized, it poses no threat to consumers, but anyone working directly with the animals bears a small risk of infection. According to The Independent,
"The disclosure comes amid growing concern over the use of modern antibiotics on British farms, driven by price pressure imposed by the big supermarket chains. Intensive farming with thousands of animals raised in cramped conditions means infections spread faster and the need for antibiotics is consequently greater. Three classes of antibiotics rated as 'critically important to human medicine' by the World Health Organization – cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones and macrolides – have increased in use in the animal population by eightfold in the last decade."
Pharma will try but no promises.... (Score:5, Interesting)
...I'm a pharma researcher at we have active programs trying to create next generation antibiotics, but the simple fact is evolution works. Eventually things will become resistant. These kinds of practices HAVE to stop because, frankly, it's getting harder to come up with new antibiotics. We have some new ideas, new biology is being uncovered, and different routes to attacking bugs are being explored. But the fact is that there will be fewer and fewer new classes of antibiotics rolling out. Pay the higher price for milk so that when you get strep throat you don't die from it. This clearly penny-wise pound-foolish thinking. A politician would do well to stand in the way of these practices under the guise of making sure that being able to protect our citizens and children from the ravages of infection wasn't just a "really nice period of humanity during the 20th and early 21st century before everything was resistant to everything." Think about someone sawing your kids leg off and then decide if milk is worth a buck / gallon more to you.
Re:Growth promotors (Score:2, Interesting)
And yet few want to talk about the root problem here. Too many humans.
Every time I hear someone utter this type of rhetoric I can't help but to think they are suicidal or homicidal maniacs.
Pound for pound the Earth can, and has, sustained a much larger mammalian population than your "unworthy of life" humans.
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop using methicillin and the resistance will go away. Microbiology 101.
It takes less than 10 divisions for the microbe not producing resistance to take over since it has a fitness advantage of not needing to invest energy in resistance.
If they were to employ scientists not partially, but fully, in this issue, we would have it solved by now. The prblem is that the long term answers by scientists would reduce short term gains desired by business.
Alas, pursuit of capital over what is right will again shoot us in the foot. The market has no long term plans or goals. Regulation and intervention with science is the only way now.
Re:Nothing to worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
If they were to employ scientists not partially, but fully, in this issue, we would have it solved by now. The prblem is that the long term answers by scientists would reduce short term gains desired by business.
This.
I cringe every time I hear people accusing scientists of scaremongering for the money. The big money in all the controversial areas is on the anti-science side, without exception.
Drop Milk (Score:4, Interesting)
Just stop using cow's milk.
60% of the global population can't digest milk once they become adults.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-30-lactose-intolerance_N.htm [usatoday.com]
Health researchers at Harvard have even come out and said cows milk isn't a necessary part of a healthy diet, it is something that is TOLERATED in a healthy diet if people don't get too much:
http://beforewisdom.com/blog/milkandbones/experts-lose-the-cows-milk/ [beforewisdom.com]
Some dairy foods can have as much or more cholesterol and saturated fat as meat.
There are substitute milks made out of almonds, rice, hemp or soy in many supermarkets now. You can use those or fortified orange juice to get plenty of calcium without the digestive stress or the many health, digestive issues of cows milk
Re:Growth promotors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Drop Milk (Score:5, Interesting)
No, 60% of the global population can't fully digest milk sugar (lactose), which only constitutes 5% of milk by weight.
Of those people, many tolerate the undigested lactose to varying degrees, tied to geographical distribution of certain genes.
The other components of milk (water, protein, fat, calcium) can be digested normally.