Katie Couric took down big livestock farming last night on CBS, with that simple, explain-it-to-me cheeriness with which she took down Sarah Palin last year. In the first of a two part series on antibiotic-use in American agriculture, Couric repeatedly linked routine livestock antibiotics to the rise of drug-resistant staph (MRSA):
A University of Iowa study last year [led by the brilliant Tara C. Smith -- El Dragón], found a new strain of MRSA — in nearly three-quarters of hogs (70 percent), and nearly two-thirds of the workers (64 percent) — on several farms in Iowa and Western Illinois. All of them use antibiotics, routinely. On antibiotic-free farms no MRSA was found.
And with this anecdote:
Former hog worker, Kim Howland took CBS News inside a factory farm in Oklahoma where she worked two years ago.
“They administer drugs, you know, constantly, constantly, constantly,” Howland said. “That’s their fix for everything.
She said drugs like Tylan, Keflex, and Baytril, the same classes used to treat everything from skin to respiratory infections in humans – were given regularly to pigs that were not sick.
Her husband contracted MRSA and almost died.
“My conclusion was that I had carried it home,” she said .
Couric also provided testimony from Pew Charitable Trust’s managing director Shelley A. Hearns, an expert in public health and the prevention of epidemics and bioterrorist attacks. Hearne has also studied the health effects of industrial-scale farming for 25 years.
“How does [MRSA] go from the farm to the meat counter, to having an adverse effect on humans,” Couric asked.
“If the bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics, it can actually spread in many ways,” Hearne said. “It could be in the food supply, but it also can be in waters that runoff in a farm. It could be in the air. It can happen very quickly in many different ways. It’s why it’s a practice that has to stop on the farms.”
Television reporting is typically cursory and overdramatic, so I’m not going to complain that the story is actually too complex for televison. I’ll give Couric a B or B- on this one: Good enough, but she didn’t really deliver a knock out punch (and could have). Discussing overuse of livestock antibiotics that are in the same class as human antibiotics? Direct hit. Doing so with a farmworker instead of an antibiotics expert? Big miss. Why couldn’t we have someone from the AMA, CDC, and/or the American Veterinary Medicine Assoication weigh in on that?
Also, Couric’s sign-off gets a big fat spitty raspberry from me. Saying “If you want to buy antibiotic-free meat, simply check the label and it will say so,” is shockingly naive and unhelpful. Anyone can print words on a label. The best way to be sure your grocery-store purchase is antibiotic-free is to purchase certified organic animal products.
What grade do you give Couric’s piece? Do you think you understand the issue after watching it? Is there anything you want to ask about antibiotics that I or other Fair Food Fighters might be able to answer?
More on overuse of antibiotics:
* New strains of old diseases prove antibiotic-proof (AP on YouTube)
It looks like the genes for antibiotic resistance are increasing in the soil – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223125137.htm
Coincidence I’m sure.
Greg
I have reserved commenting on the CBS antibiotic resistance report yet, partly because I was wanting to hear Dr. Steve Henry’s public comment. I don’t like the defensive position that has been taken and talking around it. The only really good point I have gleaned for subtheariputic use of antibiotics, besides feed efficiency, is decreasing the bacteria load to help prevent a disease outbreak. Supposedly Denmark is having the worst Salmonella outbreak on record. I haven’t fact checked it so I am only passing it on as hear say.
I have worked in the swine industry, mid sized farms and large farms, I will share my experiences and draw parallels to humans. Indoor hog farms use disinfectants between groups of pigs, disinfectants were alternated to decrease chances of outbreaks. Hospitals also use disinfectants as part of the cleaning protocol. Working closely with veterinarians to establish protocols for disease identification and treatment, teaching farmers and animal handlers to identify diseases and using the correct drug for it. There could be situations that an antibiotics aren’t the right treatment, we see this from medical doctors prescribing antibiotics at patients insistence. Antibiotics have been thought to be a miracle potion that fixed everything and it just simply isn’t.
Hogs have a low, naive, immune system and farmers take every possible step to ensure that they have an advantage over disease prevention. Are the cleaner housing of hogs inducing a more naive immune system? Humans also have a cleaner lifestyle, are our immune systems become more naive? I don’t know. I do think that a serious look needs to be given at the antibiotics used in both livestock and humans.
I hope that CBS news is having Antibiotic Resistance theme and will take a similar look at the other cogs in the wheel of the subject and highlight the big picture.
I would like to thank @FairFoodFight for the invite to drop by, we mostly agree to disagree but the discussions are civil with an occasional agreement. I can be praised, flamed, or ignored on twitter @ksfarmboy.
See, this is why we need farmers of all “denominations” contributing to our discussions. You’re the original natural scientists, observing and responding to what you see with your own eyes, so I greatly appreciate any farmer’s thoughtful input on Fair Food Fight.
(And just to be clear — I like the civil discussion too, but y’all can throw punches, if you see something you strongly disagree with. At least with me you can. As long as we can shake hands afterward and you help me to the emergency room, bare-knuckled honesty is ok by me.)
This discussion is going to be boring, though, because I agree with your “too-clean” theory, KS Farm Boy. I’ve heard this sort of theory from organic poultry farmers, too, that allowing birds to hunt and peck outdoors actually builds their immune systems, as opposed to keeping them under lock-and-key in “biosecurity” barns, where visitors have to wear clean suits to protect the birds from anything they might be carrying in. By making so many modern environments sterile with antimicrobial soaps and disinfectants, we baby the immune systems of the living creatures in our care. Stands to reason that would play a role in strengthening microbes, too.
And, yes, I’ve been trying to find information on the Danish salmonella outbreak. All I can find, though, is reference to it from Pork Boards citing it in their op-ed pieces against Katie Couric.
My understanding though is that the salmonella in question is drug-resistant, and the outbreak may be traceable to pork slaughterhouses in Denmark.
Question: If this salmonella is drug-resistant, would greater use of antibiotics have stopped this outbreak in the first place? Or is this another case of drug-resistant bacteria simply being in the “community” and wandering into our farms?
If anyone has solid info from a public health source about that outbreak, I’d love to read what’s going on.
Thanks again for stopping by, @ksfarmboy. Fair Food Fighters can read this dude’s blog at Tales of a Kansas Farm Boy.
I read a headline about this but never followed up, so thank you for the link, Greg.
What really gets me alarmed about the American agriculture community is how they defend a practice like this can have such contempt for “silly consumers” or that “we should just start talk with a farmer”. This is the one issue were I can not be diplomatic.
Antibiotics have become not a “tool” but a crutch. My diary farming neighbors(conventional) would treat a cow with AB’s to save her life(would is the operative word because they could not compete against CAFO dairies and Dean Foods. This makes a lot of sense, it is humane and the cow is a huge investment but on a farm where a farmer is milking 50 -120 cows he/she has a better handle on their health and ABa can be a tool not a crutch.
However, when you are feeding animals to prevent disease you have to wonder if the whole system is flawed.
I was at a college last week and they spoke about how much “disease” pressure there was on pigs inside a building. Maybe, it is the method were we are raising our pigs that brings about disease not the “medicine”.
My father’s philosophy is that smart breeding and good farming can prevent disease. He is 100% against it’s usage but I have always thought that farmers that use it to save a cow to be humane.With that said, AB use in Dairy and AB abuse in hog operations are not the same thing. Kansas Farm Boy is correct that Pigs are prone to disease.
The issue is complicated but I think we need to become smarter. Many my peers are have stopped eatting meat and many of them are even going vegan. This alarms me. We need to start farming in a way that does not scare people. Granted, we should not be taking farming advice from vegans but maybe we should not be taking farming advice from Smithfeild and Tyson either. There are a lot of forces out there that can hurt our(farmers) livelihood. For me, AB in feed is a cover up for bad farming. Put the pigs on pasture on smaller family farms and I bet there will be a lot of change. Yes, I am a raving idealist.
Hog farming is tough and the commodity prices for pork are in the toilet. And do you know how much those climate controlled barns cost? Millions! Pasture as a tool is actually not that far fetched when you think of how expensive the barn and vet care is. Just sayin!
It’s a complex question. You could write a book about it (Oh wait — I did!)
Thing is, it’s not either/or — that farming with indiscriminate use of antibiotics did or did not create the increases in MRSA incidence, resistance and virulence. It’s both/and.
Hospital MRSA, the first epidemic, pretty clearly arose in hospitals among people who had undermined immune systems and were being given lots of drugs, and then spread through poor infection control abetting staph’s own unique nimbleness. The first known cases were identified in a British hospital in 1961 and it went worldwide with striking speed; first US cases were recorded in Boston in 1968.
No one is sure why community MRSA arose in the 1990s, but it is sufficiently genetically different from hospital MRSA that you can say with confidence it didn’t just “leak” from hospitals. And now, you know, it’s pretty much everywhere: 19,000 deaths a year, 369,000 hospitalizations, multiple millions of doctor or ER visits.
Then there’s MRSA ST398 in the EU, Canada and Iowa (so far). That’s the, again slightly different genetically, MRSA strain that arose in pigs, spread to pig farm workers, and now has caused hospital outbreaks in several countries. (There’s a parallel situation with a different strain, ST9, in China.) This one is quite clearly linked to farm antibiotic use. The proof is the resistance pattern. ST398 is resistant to tetracycline. When people take tetracycline it’s never for very long, not long enough for the drug to exert evolutionary pressure on the bug. But tetracycline is very commonly given to pig herds.
So yeah, farm antibiotics play a role.
The question in response to that is probably: Well, if there’s so much MRSA out there already, why does it matter whether there is farm-related MRSA also, especially if it isn’t making that many people sick relative to the other types? The answer to that is that illness isn’t the only problem. Bacteria have a quite astonishing ability to trade resistance factors among themselves. . If you wanted to create a natural laboratory for breeding unpredictable multi-drug resistant strains of bacteria, you couldn’t do better than assembling multiple millions of animals that already harbor resistant bacteria, giving them additional drugs, and failing to monitor them closely for what the bugs are doing — which is what we currently do.
What really gets me alarmed about the American agriculture “community” is how they defend a practice like this and have such contempt for “silly consumers” or that “we should just talk with a farmer”. As if our shock is miss understanding when it is just simply, shock. This is the one issue where I cannot be diplomatic. Agricultural consolidation and AB abuse go hand in hand.
Antibiotics have become not a “tool” but a crutch. My dairy-farming neighbors (conventional) would treat a cow with AB’s to save her life (would is the operative word because they no longer farm because they could not compete against CAFO dairies and Dean Foods.) This makes a lot of sense, it is humane and a cow is a huge investment but on a farm where a farmer is milking 50 -120 cows he/she has a better handle on their health and AB’s can be a tool not a crutch. Using AB’s to prevent disease means the ratio to human handler (farmer?) and animals is WAY out of whack.
When you are feeding animals to prevent disease you have to wonder if the whole system is flawed.
I was at a college last week and they spoke about how much “disease” pressure there was on pigs inside a building. Maybe, it is the method where we are raising our pigs that bring about disease not the “medicine”. They also said that the hog barns were way too expensive and the meat prices way too low and they were going broke farming in this manner. On pasture, they use inexpensive huts and seem to be experiencing a lot less mortality with no use of antibiotics. (Would love to be able to get hard data on this).
My father’s philosophy is that smart breeding and good farming can prevent disease. He is 100% against it’s usage but I have always thought that farmers that use it to save a cow to be humane. With that said, AB use in on a small Dairy and AB abuse in hog operations are not the same thing. Kansas Farm Boy is correct that Pigs are prone to disease, all the more reason not to crowd them into expensive facilities that require expensive drugs to make it “work.”
The issue is complicated but I think we need to become smarter. The Ag community needs to stop being so defensive and farmers need to start getting creative to save their farms (and that means eliminating high input costs).
Many of my peers have stopped eating meat and many of them are even going vegan. This alarms me. We need to start farming in a way that does not scare people—-I also think this way of farming is the ONLY way small farms can compete and win against AGRI-giants. Granted, we should not be taking farming advice from vegans but maybe we should not be taking farming advice from Smithfield and Tyson, either. There are a lot of forces out there that can hurt our (farmers) livelihood. For me, AB’s in feed is a cover up for bad farming. Put the pigs on pasture, on smaller family farms, and I bet there will be a lot of change. Yes, I am a raving idealist.
Another point, hog farming is tough and the commodity prices for pork are in the toilet right now. And do you know how much those climate-controlled barns cost? Millions! Pasture, as a tool is actually not that far fetched when you think of how expensive the barn and vet care is. Just sayin!
That’s obviously waaaay too much gray area for a broadcast news report, so I can understand why her researchers hacked into something more black-and-white. But it would have been helpful to hear that farm antibiotics play a role — perhaps even the role — but not the only role in the rise of some superbugs.
(No time to fully delineate the considerable credentials of Maryn McKenna — if you’re curious about what she brings to this conversation, check out her bio here. I don’t think there are too many people who would argue that McKenna is one of the best science journalists writing today, so we’re lucky to have her input in my opinion.)
I did like the focus on subtherapeutic use.
She didn’t cloud that issue with talk of procedures/food safety issues treating sick animals.
I hope the ongoing discussion separates the two questions too.
Discussion of antibiotics and how bugs become resistant gets pretty thick and muddy, but feeding antibiotics to livestock when they aren’t sick (“subtherapeutic”) is certainly part of the equation. Here’s a grown-up reporter addressing the issue for Johns Hopkins Magazine in an article titled “Farmacology.” From the article:
[M]icrobes carry genes in what are called resistance cassettes, which can be thought of as kits that contain a variety of genes for fighting off different drugs. So, a germ resistant to tetracycline may have a resistance cassette that contains not only the gene for fighting off that drug, but genes resistant to other drugs, as well. The result? A person could be colonized by a tetracycline-resistant germ that does her no harm, but lurks in her system and contains, in its cassette, resistance to methicillin. If this unlucky person then acquires a simple staph infection, and that staph encounters the first microbe and taps its resistance cassette, her routine staph infection has now become MRSA and she could be in real trouble. Silbergeld’s biggest concern is that factory farms are building reservoirs of these resistance cassettes in animals, in the environment, and in humans.
Ag professionals often make the argument that by using different classes of antibiotics in ag, resistance in humans is prevented. But clearly it’s more complicated than that. It’s not just that human beings are becoming more resistant to our own antibiotics. It’s that microbes can become resistantto a variety of drug-types far more quickly and effectively than drug- and law-makers realize.
Nice 4 part post, this page specifically antibiotics http://bit.ly/boxd7w
Includes nice chart on usage trends, shows:
1.discontinuation of AB growth promotors,
2. increase of vet prescribed AB’s, but don’t think rate exceeds that huge increase in pork production talked about?
3. flat usage in humans, note Danish population is pretty well flat
still, their transition hammered pork producer numbers from 30K? to 10K. This report, http://bit.ly/aUHRJK appears to have been done in Denmark back in the day and reflects the work industry had to do in the 3-6 mos after the ban.
e.g. “So far the exclusion of antibiotic growth promoters has resulted in an increase in use of antibiotics for treatment. However, approaches such as optimum management, sectionised batch operation, restricted feeding and ground raw cereals together with organic acids have minimized this increase at present.”
Main barrier in U.S. seems to be the problem of processing the increased cost through the market system, est $700-$1bil over several years before it’s digested. No trouble figuring out who will bear the brunt of that transition pain.
Great information and thanks for posting it here. Totally makes sense to me that there would be a rise in use of therapeutic antibiotics and vet prescribed ABs after a ban on preventative-use. Still, it’s the daily usage that’s the real proble if overall usage is down, that’s good.
I’m suspect of that second report: Is that an industry pork board writing a document about its pork industry? It seems fairly sober so I’ll take it at face value.
Just a quick recap for those following along at home. 1998: Denmark banned non-medical, growth-promoting use of antibiotics on farms, the very kind of ban under consideration here in America. As a result, anyone serious about limiting antibiotic-use for US livestock should familiarize themselves with what happened in Denmark after the ban. Make sense?
Right off the bat, I’m curious about this statement in thereport’s introductory summary:
So far the exclusion of antibiotic growth promoters {AGP] has resulted in an increase in use of antibiotics for treatment.
Followed by this statement a page later:
“What are our experiences with this “termination” so far?…The use of antibiotics for treatment did not rise. Actually, we saw that the use of antibiotics for treatment had a downward tendency, whereas the daily gain and the feed conversion was not affected.”
So that’s confusing me.
But, yes, the report actually does give a decent description of what US pork farmers would need to do to compensate fora lack of antibiotics as a preventative measure:
Unfortunately, nobody has found anything as powerful as the antibiotics to replace the AGP
with. However, we do see an approach towards better management, adjusted production units
and new additives, which all together reduce the dependence of antibiotics.
“Better management”? Me, I’d call that a nice, bold check in the PRO column. I know the idea of changing management systems is a check in the CON column for conventional pork farmers, but with microbes getting a daily, nationwide education in how to combat our antibiotics and leap over that line of defense, ag does need to act (as does the medical profession and antimicrobial soap makers).
I’m curious where your number about $1 billion over severeal years to convert to “better management” comes from? Not that I doubt it (the figure actually sounds low to me), but I’m always looking to bookmark info like that.
From Part 2 of Couric’s report last night on CBS:
Since the ban, the Danish pork industry has grown by 43 percent – making it one of the top exporters of pork in the world.
I thought Couric did a pretty good job getting the basic issue before the public. I was disappointed that she focused so exclusively on pork, however. Poultry farms are also big prophylactic antibiotic users, and poultry is eaten by more Americans more often than pork. A typical knee-jerk response would be “I just won’t eat pork until I can do some more research on this,” until, three or six months later, when the issue will be forgotten.
I was also rather disappointed that Couric didn’t mention that four separate sessions of Congress have addressed this issue since 2003 and the bill has died as many times. She didn’t mention the name of the bill: HR1549, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009, or say that it is now in committee. She didn’t even suggest we contact our representatives to make our voices known.
Weak.
Couric went more into poultry in last night’s second part.
I agree, the two pieces together were barely an appetizer for the complicated issue. Wish Rep. Louise Slaughter had been interviewed, too — co-sponsor of the PAMTA bill and the only microbiologist in Congress. Highly credible source of information.
I’m going to keep yanking discussions from Twitter and stashing them over here on Fair Food Fight. Hope you don’t mind.
One of the studies cited by conventional agriculture professionals who would like to maintain use of antibiotics in their industry is the so-called “Danish study.” This 2003 World Health Organization study examined what happened to livestock and human health after the Danish government banned subtherapeutic/non-medical use of antibiotics for cattle, broiler chickens, and pigs in 1998.
Five years after the Danish ban on antibiotics, it appeared to WHO that there was no discernible change in Denmark’s human public health that could be attributed to the ban. (Their study did however determine that resistance to antibiotics in livestock was reduced as were incidences of drug-resistant microbes. According to WHO, the Danish ban led to dramatic reductions in resistant bacteria in pork and chicken: 60-80 % had bacteria that were resistant to three widely used antibiotics before the ban, compared to 5-35% after.)
But ongoing studies from 2003-2008 by DANMAP (Danish Integrated Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring and Research Programm) show that human health may have been positively affected after all: The percentage of human resistance isolates dropped among Danes during those years after the ban — in other words, human exposure and resistance to certain antibiotics improved. From Pew Charitable Trusts’ “Avoiding Antibiotic Resistance: Denmark’s Ban on Growth Promoting Antibiotics in Food Animals”:
…WHO in 2003 could not determine the ban’s direct and total effect on antimicrobial resistance in humans because of limited data; clinical cases of antibiotic resistance related to growth promoters in Denmark were rare both before and after the ban, making it difficult to establish a trend. Newer monitoring data, however, shows that human resistance trends appear to be mirroring the decline in on-farm use of antibiotics—a positive indicator for public health. Today, the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries reports, “The stop for use of different non-therapeutic antibiotic growth promoters…has resulted in a major reduction in antimicrobial resistance as measured among several different bacterial species in food animals and food.”
I’ve looked at the trend lines in the DANMAP 2007 study, and they suggest to me that either no antibiotic-resistance problem existed in Danes, or their ban did its job (the trend lines for most antibiotic-resistance isolates are flatly in “nonexistent territory” in humans after 2003 — Danes haven’t been developing resistances or getting worse since the ban — which I guess is “positive”). Downward trends do track right along with reduced farm-usage in the cases of tetracyclene and avilamycin isolates in healthy humans. That’s clearly attributable to the antibiotic-ban, and very positive indeed.
So ag professionals should probably stop citing it as proof that Denmark’s ban on farm-use of antibiotics didn’t improve human health in that country. It wasn’t eye-popping or dramatic, but the ban did have a measurable effect.
Attributed to Iowa State economists in various reports, this one looks to be pretty direct:
http://bit.ly/b0yMey
When reading it, I highlight this little tidbit:
So far there is very little evidence to suggest that these export customers are concerned about the use of antibiotics among suppliers. However, once the European Union (EU) or Danish industry can guarantee reliable supplies of antibiotic-free pork, this situation may change. Losses to the U.S. pork industry associated with a loss of an important export customer, such as Japan, would dwarf the losses associated with the ban described above.
The Japanese adore our beef market, but talk about resistance. Antibiotic-use and the potential for Mad Cow in US beef freak them right out. We’d ingratiate ourselves to them and other emerging Asian markets if we switched away from antibiotics across the board.
Plus, as Couric pointed out on CBS, Danish farmers saw a 43% increase in sales since their ban.
The CBS report the stated “Without growth-promoting antibiotics, it only costs $5 more for every 100 pounds of pork brought to market in this country.” This number is actually much higher than other estimates, for example, the ISU study above found a cost of $6.00 per head. $5 per 100 weight is actually more than twice as much. There is evidence that even the $5.00 per head is high.
The ISU authors have published these results in one peer reviewed journal Food Control.Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 73-141 (March 2002) .Technology choice and the economic effects of a ban on the use of antimicrobial feed additives in swine rations. Their estimateis around $6.00 per pig but they mention (Page 99) an industry study found only a $0.25 benefit per head from using additives.
Similarly researchers at University of Illinoins found that the cost to producers of a ban on non-therapeutic use (prevention and growth) would be only $376/1020 head barn which leads to $0.36 per head. (http://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea03/21931.html)
Finally a study of an antibiotic free system in NC found that going antibiotic free cost only $0.32 per head. http://www.ncsu.edu/project/swine_extension/swine_news/2008/sn_v3106%20%28june%29.htm
All of these 3 studies used real data from US farms.
So industry is stating without growth promoters the cost will be $12.50 per head ($5.00 per hundred weight on a 250 lb pig at slaughter) while these other studies found less than $0.50 pigs for bans on all feed additives.
There are premiums for no antibiotic no hormone beef, natural. Creekstone was one of the first to offer them, when shut out of Japanese market due to BSE, they turned to Europe to market beef. They give quality premiums, on top of the natural premium. The big 4, Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National, also has similar premiums in addition for animals that are age and source verified. In addition animals that qualify for Certified Angus Beef recieve premiums. Basically black hided cattle that grade high choice or better will bring added premiums, with natural can bring more than enough to make up for the slower growth. The Japanese love American beef, finding cattle under 20 months of age is a challenge.
Something interesting in the beef industry is that the big packers don’t have as much control on supplies as in pork and poultry. Small value added premium programs have crept in with smaller packers. Also R-Calf raises enough hell on captive supply to keep them on thier toes.
@ksfarmboy
This audio interview is out as well, after part 1. It’s the same Dr. Wagstrom, Pork Spokeswoman on the CBS report. I highlight her assertion that there have been no MRSA cases linked to the animal industry, citing contact with CDC. So we have CBS highlighting some MRSA cases, including a cluster from a poultry site and industry saying it’s just in the community.
http://bit.ly/d4b5iU
It’s this attitude and reaction from Dr. Wagstrom that ag has to question, alter. Rather than citcling the wagons and protecting the industry as it is, the ag industry should be out in front of the coming change. Some ag professionals do get it. There’s an excellent post over at Maryn McKenna’s blog Superbug, Farming and Antibiotics – and Voices from the Ag Side, in which some farm voices are recognizing that farmers should be delivering the call to change, not resisting it. I highly recommend that farmers, Farm Bureau members, and ag marketers read that post.
Why should you lead a call to change in regards to antibiotics? Because your industry IS heading in this direction, farmers, whether a ban comes from Congress or not. McDonald’s and Wendy’s both have restricted the use of some antibiotics in the meats they purchase. It’s not a total ban nor does it woo my buying dollar, but the point is this: If you want to know which way the wind is blowing, pay attention to what the biggest cu$tomers in your industry are saying and doing.
And then ask yourself this: Who in the ag world is giving you farmers the straight dope about where opportunity is sprouting in your industry? Or is the goal to simply contradict people who say things you don’t like?
It’s great to see the huge issue of antibiotics getting such high profile, mainstream press…. but I agree that it doesn’t hit hard enough. It’s especially disturbing that it ends with a kind of platitude about labeling on packages without it being a clear, certified labeling (organic!) People want to trust their grocers and will accept non-certified claims with far too much credibility…. so Katie pulled her punch there.
More disturbing is that this talks about antibiotics as if it were an isolated issue…. not an outcome of horrible animal conditions, which is an outcome of our demand for cheap food, which incidentally has led to obesity and health problems. Antibiotics are a symptom of a massive systemic problem with how our society approaches food.
But….. after thinking about it some more and reading comments…. I wonder if more people will think differently and purchase differently (and eat differently!) because of Katie’s light, more viewer-friendly take on this…. Her viewers would be put off by complexity and overwhelmed by the inter-related issues. But is that true? Do we have any evidence for it?
And…. I want to see what she does in part 2.
You nailed it, Melissa. I actually think Couric’s lightness and ridiculously demeaning cadence (she sounds like she’s reading “Goodnight, Moon” to an impaired 3-year-old) is probably the only way to address this with the majority of Americans. I mean, most still think a “farm” means a rooster and a horsie and a duckie and a Lego man with a straw hat holding a hoe. Antibiotics? Whoa, wait, what??
I don’t know of any studies showing that Americans can handle anything more complex than Katie dished out. I’m sure we can, but simply do not want to — it’s how we got into this mess, in my humble O.
Here’s Part 2 by the way.
Transmission (spreading) of MRSA between animals and humans has been reported, as have human MRSA infections from animal contact. High rates of colonization (present without causing infection) have been seen in humans who have close contact with animals, such as veterinary personnel.
While community-associated MRSA infections are becoming more widely reported, the number of MRSA cases overall remains low in healthy persons in the community.
For more information about MRSA, please visit the CDC website:
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Colonization in Veterinary Personnel
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no12/06-0231.htm
Community-Associated MRSA Information for the Public
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html
National MRSA Education Initiative: Preventing MRSA Skin Infections
http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa
You may also contact your state health department for additional information.
A link to finding state health departments is at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/international/relres.html
We hope that you find this information helpful and look forward to assisting you again in the future.
Thank you for contacting CDC-INFO Contact Center. Please do not hesitate to call 1-800-CDC-INFO, e-mail cdcinfo@cdc.gov or visit http://www.cdc.gov if you have any additional questions.
Hi all, fascinating discussion. (Thanks for the shout above, El D!) I’m Maryn McKenna, I’ve been tracking MRSA for several years at Superbug the blog, and am author of the forthcoming-scary-soon Superbug the book.
I don’t know what you asked the CDC, so excuse me if I’m off-base, but: The MRSA that is carried by animals is missed by the major surveillance schemes that the CDC oversees. There’s a range of overlapping surveillance networks covering parts of the country that look for hospital and community strains of MRSA in humans — but the main strain that is being carried by animals, usually known as MRSA ST398 (and sometimes CC398), doesn’t register on those tests. There’s also a CDC surveillance scheme shared with USDA called NARMS that looks in animals for five pathogens that could cause disease in humans; MRSA is not one of them.
Those data gaps are one good reason why people who don’t think MRSA in livestock is concerning can claim that there isn’t much of it, or that it has been found only in Iowa. There isn’t much of it because no one is counting it, and it’s only been found in Iowa because that’s the only state where someone had the funding to look for it, and devised a surveillance scheme that would pick it up.
Thank you, Maryn. Love your blog and your writing, as you know.
I wanted to ask you something, as long as you’ve stopped by. Farmers and ag professionals take issue with the presumption that livestock farming is to blame for the rise in MRSA. They might argue that MRSA is “in the community,” and that it wound up in farms, just as it wound up in hospitals and everywhere else.
What’s your answer to that? Are subtherapeutic antibiotics responsible for MRSA? Does anyone know for sure?
UPDATE: For an example of that ag talking point, see this op-ed in the Des Moines Register.