The debate took its latest turn on Tuesday, when U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY, introduced legislation that would require drug manufacturers to go through a new approval process to ensure that antibiotics used in farm animals don’t pose a danger to human health. Slaughter said mounting evidence showed that routine antibiotic use in factory farms was leading to drug resistance in humans. Many medical professionals fear the development of a so-called lethal “superbug” resistant to treatment.
The pharmaceutical and agricultural industries have pushed against similar efforts in the past. Pork producers say that antibiotics are a necessary part of good farm management and that the health risk is minimal.
The legislation Slaughter introduced is similar to others that have failed in recent years. The bill aims to curtail the use of antibiotics for everyday use. Critics say the drugs fatten the animals more quickly and compensate for crowded conditions in large-scale operations. Slaughter said 84 percent of feedlots administered antibiotics in feed or water. “It makes absolutely no sense to hand this to animals that aren’t sick,” she said. “We’re misusing one of the best scientific tools we have.”
via 03/18/2009 – Antibiotics for livestock are target of bill in House – STLtoday.com.
The full details of this case are in a members only site – but this and recent research in Manhattan indicates the spread of ST398 in the community
Methicillin-resistant S. aureus MRSA poses a serious threat to public health, since few drugs, or in the currently rare cases of vancomycin-resistant MRSA, no drugs are able to treat these infections. The arrival this week of ST398 at a US hospital signals the beginning of a potential clone war with the better recognized USA 200 or USA 300 MRSA clones.
via ST398 MRSA Clone Arrives in US Hospital This Week.
The Swiss Veterinary Office has confirmed the presence of bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a couple of Swiss farms. This is the first time that this bacterium was detected in Switzerland.
Bacteria have been discovered by researchers at the University and the Institute Laussanne Galli-Valerio, after sampling more than 100 farms. Pathogens have been detected in pigs and two cows that showed symptoms of inflammation of the udders. Also we have found that three people were carrying the bacteria, though they have not shown symptoms.
The strain detected is the ST398, which is resistant to the antibiotic group lactamina-beta, which is widely used in human medicine like penicillin and cephalosporins.
The MRSA was first detected in animals in 1972. We have already detected the presence of MRSA on farms in the U.S., Canada, Germany and Holland.
The food chain situation with MRSA examined
We don’t add antibiotics to baby food and Cocoa Puffs so that children get fewer ear infections. That’s because we understand that the overuse of antibiotics is already creating “superbugs” resistant to medication. Yet we continue to allow agribusiness companies to add antibiotics to animal feed so that piglets stay healthy and don’t get ear infections. Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the United States go to healthy livestock, according to a careful study by the Union of Concerned Scientists — and that’s one reason we’re seeing the rise of pathogens that defy antibiotics.
via Op-Ed Columnist – Pathogens in Our Pork – NYTimes.com.
This well known science blogger suggest we not be too tentative about ST398.
I’m always loath to criticize mainstream discussions of the antibiotic resistance, particularly when the link between antibiotic use in agriculture and antibiotic resistance is raised. But, while NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof meant well, he missed the mark.
In his column about MRSA ST398, he describes things that might happen. Here’s one example:
Public health experts worry that pigs could pass on the infection by direct contact with their handlers, through their wastes leaking into ground water (one study has already found antibiotic-resistant bacteria entering ground water from hog farms), or through their meat, though there has been no proven case of someone getting it from eating pork. Thorough cooking will kill the bacteria, but people often use the same knife to cut raw meat and then to chop vegetables. Or they plop a pork chop on a plate, cook it and then contaminate it by putting it back on the original plate.
The problem I have with Kristof’s column is that MRSA ST398 isn’t a hypothetical. The reason the spread of MRSA ST398 into the healthcare system scares the crap out of me isn’t that it might happen: it’s already happened. We already have documented evidence from the Netherlands, where ST398 has started to show up in the healthcare system in agricultural regions of the country. And in Sweden, ST398 is present in the community.
via Mike the Mad Biologist : Kristof on MRSA: Good, but There’s Better Evidence.
This is another helpful article from the writer putting ST398 at the centre of media attention. See link below for full story.
Some readers have suggested that I’m picking on pigs (in my last couple of columns), since other animals can also carry MRSA. That’s true, but there are a couple of reasons for focusing on hogs.
One is that hogs produce vast amounts of waste, creating important sanitation problems. The town I reported my first column from, Camden, Indiana, has a population of a bit more than 500, and a sewage system to match. But around it are more than 50,000 hogs, producing more waste than a city of 100,000 people, and there’s no sewage treatment system for those hogs. Instead, the waste sits in ponds and eventually seeps into ground water. No city of 100,000 would ever go without a sewage system, but that’s routine for clusters of hog operations. And sanitation is one route by which diseases including MRSA can spread. There’s some evidence that the business model of industrial hog operations is essentially to save money by externalizing the sanitation costs on the public.
via When Boars Grope Sows…. – Nicholas D. Kristof Blog – NYTimes.com.
Kristof blames the overuse of antibiotics in healthy animals for the antibiotic resistance in both people and animals:
[T]he central problem here isn’t pigs, it’s humans. Unlike Europe and even South Korea, the United States still bows to agribusiness interests by permitting the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feed. That’s unconscionable.
The Pultizer-prize-winning Kristof is no foe of farmers. He grew up on a farm and has tuned in to food. He called for a Secretary of Food rather than a Secretary of Agriculture and followed-up after Vilsack’s appointment suggesting a Deputy Secretary of Food.
Still, over at ScienceBlogs Mike the Mad Biologist says there’s better evidence:
The problem I have with Kristof’s column is that MRSA ST398 isn’t a hypothetical. The reason the spread of MRSA ST398 into the healthcare system scares the crap out of me isn’t that it might happen: it’s already happened. We already have documented evidence from the Netherlands, where ST398 has started to show up in the healthcare system in agricultural regions of the country. And in Sweden, ST398 is present in the community.
These are countries with reasonably good antibiotic use policies, so I’m not exactly optimistic. I’m glad Kristof raised the issue, but the reflexive conservative denialists will attack the column, when he could have provided much stronger evidence.
via MRSA ST398 & the Overuse of Nontherapeutic Antibiotics.
Flies, already blamed for spreading disease, may help spread drug-resistant superbugs from chicken droppings, researchers reported on Monday. They matched antibiotic-resistant enterococci and staphylococci bacteria from houseflies and the litter found in intensive poultry-farming barns in the Delmarva Peninsula region of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The findings, reported in the journal Science of the Total Environment, may help explain some of the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.
via Flies may be spreading MRSA from fowl feces – Infectious diseases- msnbc.com.
Purdue University experts said a New York Times opinion piece this week that tried to establish pigs as a source of MRSA infection for humans is “highly speculative.”
MRSA, (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), or antibiotic-resistant staph, can be found anywhere in nature, according to Paul Ebner, a livestock microbiologist. While he said there has been an increase in the number of these infections and that pigs and other animals can be carriers, the vast majority of infections come from skin-to-skin contact with infected humans.
Making assumptions based on limited studies or information is a big jump and there is no proof to link MRSA in humans to pigs and pig operations at this time, said Ching Ching Wu, professor of veterinary pathobiology and head of microbiology in Purdue’s Animal Disease and Diagnostic Laboratory. Wu said there is more scientific evidence to support the spread of MRSA among humans and from humans to animals rather than from animals to humans.
A University of Iowa study mentioned in the Times column was a pilot study that looked at only two farms, and only one of them had the organism. Another Dutch study was also inconclusive, according to the Purdue experts.
via Purdue Experts On Livestock & Antibiotic Resistance – Cattle Network.
Note that this was the mild version.
Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital, led by infectious diseases specialist Leonard Mermel, DO, ScM, set out to determine if retail beef, chicken and pork is contaminated with MRSA, vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To do so, meats from 10 supermarkets and butcher shops in the greater Providence area were obtained for a total of 36 samples (12 each of beef, chicken and pork).
Their findings indicated that only one of the 36 samples contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which was found in a sample of pork from one store. Of note, Staphylococcus aureus (methicillin-sensitive, not MRSA), was found in four of the 36 meat samples, which is consistent with previous reports. These findings do not indicate a cause for concern regarding meat purchased in the Providence area. The researchers, however, do urge the public to be sure to always cook meats to the recommended temperatures. This will reduce risk of illness if any bacteria is present.
Meat Evaluated For MRSA, VRE And Other Organisms In First Of Its Kind Study.
