This is a very helpful article about inertia and denial over ST398 in the USA. 

Nevertheless, the FDA and USDA eagerly pointed to a group called the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System as the protector of humans from bacteria in food.

The coalition of scientists from several federal agencies primarily target salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli.

However, according to USDA’s Goldman, the group does not screen for MRSA.

The National Pork Producers Council said there is no cause for concern.

“There is nothing to worry about; MRSA (in pigs) has not been found this side of the border,” a spokeswoman said. “USDA and CDC have given our pigs a clean bill of health.”

A CDC spokeswoman said that she could find “no indication we made that statement.”

According to congressional investigators, the pork lobbyists have said their industry would oppose any attempt to test all livestock for MRSA, calling the testing “unnecessary to protect public health.”

Some members of Congress are insisting that the government do more to determine MRSA’s threat to the food supply.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, warned last week that there is “overwhelming evidence” that the overuse of antibiotics in industrial livestock production is endangering the effectiveness of many of the most crucial antibiotics for humans.

Pigsite: Potentially fatal bacteria found in pigs, farmworkers.

For those wondering what the scope of the national ST398 surveys is here is the basic outline and a link

The technical specifications for the survey provided for in this Decision will be based on the EFSA report on the technical specifications for a survey on the prevalence of MRSA in herds of breeding pigs, to be adopted on 19 November 2007 (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1178662632875.htm). A large number of Member States expressed their favourable position on the proposal.Spain and Austria were concerned that this was a human health issue to be dealt with by the health authorities. The Commission clarified that since transmission to human beings is through contact with pigs the proposal does fall under the scope of the zoonoses monitoring Directive. There is no evidence for the moment that it is a zoonosis transmitted by food. The Commission asked the committee to express their position by the end of the week. It is intended to put the proposal to the vote at the 20 November 2007 SCFCAH, Animal Health section

SANCO -E.

Perhaps I’m a bit niave but this sounds like a cross infection nightmare waiting to happen and a surer fire way to carry disease around the whole continent of Europe.

The European Commission is considering a plan to allow pigs to be fed poultry trimmings and chickens to be given pig meat to save farmers from buying expensive grain and have asked for Professor Wall’s advice. He told The Times: “Soya meal and other grain prices are going through the roof. Is it morally and ethically correct to be destroying this food when people are starving? No one I know is worried about the science. There is only concern about consumer reaction.”

A spokesman for Defra said that it was awaiting formal advice from the European Food Standards Agency. “We would only support the proposal if we were satisfied that there was no risk to human health and that appropriate and effective testing had taken place to control the use of such proteins in pig and poultry feed,” it said.

EU food chief: Lift BSE ban to cut grain prices – Times Online .

“Statements connecting pork products and MRSA and linking the bacterial infection to the use of antibiotics in pigs are seriously misleading,” said Jill Appell, a pork producer from Altona, Ill., and president of the National Pork Producers Council. “Pigs are not responsible for the increase in MRSA cases contrary to the claims of our critics and some editorial writers.”

The Dutch food safety authority, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, conducted a risk assessment in the Netherlands and concluded that the MRSA present in food animals such as pigs is not a food-safety threat. And a recent Institute of Food Technologists report stated that correlating the risk of antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance in humans is not possible.

There is reason to believe that antibiotics in the food chain promote resistance. Who you going to listen to. Many governments who are legislating against antibiotics or an industry body

The CDC pointed out that 80 percent of life-threatening MRSA infections appear to be the result of patient-to-patient transmission in inpatient health-care facilities. Additionally, the “vast majority” of community-associated infections result from person-to-person transmission, it said. The agency also pointed out that it has conducted numerous investigations of community-associated MRSA outbreaks, and “in none of these investigations has animal exposure been identified as a risk factor for infection.”

CDC are clearly not reading the relevant research or the growing body of evidence from the vets world

National Pork Producers Council.

Mmmmm – denial is the order of the day

Lord Hylton asked Her Majesty’s Government:

- Whether they will test imported pig and poultry meat for MRSA inview of the infection in four European Union countries; and whether they will begin taking sample tests of live pigs and poultry inBritain, together with meat for retail sale.

Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker replied:

We have no plans totest imported pigs, poultry and their meat for MRSA. The FSA has not previously conducted any surveys for the presence of MRSA in raw meats(whether imported or home-reared) at the point of retail sale. Atpresent, the FSA does not intend to conduct such a survey as the results would not change policy advice on the handling of meat.

The UK is taking part in an EU-wide survey which includes testing for MRSA in breeding pig herds, running from January to December.

BPEX and MRSA testing.

This is the report that precipitated major press coverage of MRSA in Farm Animals

This report focuses on a major new antibiotic-resistance problem in farming,which may have serious consequences for human health. In some countries,

methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been found in a largenumber of farm animals and in retail meat. The British scientist, Dr AndrewWaller, has described the emergence of MRSA and other methicillin-resistant bacteria in animals as ‘a new monster’ (see p 11), but according to Defra, there iscurrently no UK or EU legislation to control it

MRSA report mini.indd.

There seems to be a lethargy over MRSA at the CDC. They underestimate and underplay

Earlier this year, Schneider reports, a Canadian researcher found MRSA in “10 percent of 212 samples of pork chops and ground pork bought in four Canadian provinces.” The Canadian pork industry, which exports some 762 million pounds of pork into the U.S. annually, has also embraced the concentrated-animal feedlot operation (CAFO) model, with its heavy reliance on antibiotics.

The Canadian researcher even delivered his findings at a Center for Disease Control confab. The response from U.S. authorities? Awkward silence. The USDA, which is responsible for the safety of imported food, doesn’t test for MRSA, Schneider reports.

The FDA, responsible for monitoring the safety of U.S.-grown foods, might have been expected to start testing our homegrown pork in light of the Canadian findings. But it didn’t, according to Schneider.

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