September 16th, 2010, 02:20 PM
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kmar
is a believer that with effort wishes can come true!
Senior Member | | Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: New York
Posts: 508
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 U.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics
U.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics
«http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/us/15farm.html?_r=2
( Complete Article at LINK above )
The questions over antibiotics come at a time when animal confinement methods and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under attack.
Drug use in humans, including overuse and misapplication, clearly accounts for a large share of the surge in antibiotic resistant infections, a huge problem in hospitals in particular. Yet biologists and infectious disease specialists say there is also enormous circumstantial and genetic evidence that antibiotics in farming are adding to the threat.
Livestock and poultry have been identified as the most likely sources of drug-resistant strains of microbes like salmonella and campylobacter that have caused outbreaks of severe intestinal illness in people andof E. coli strains that cause serious bladder, blood and other infections. (Resistant strains have not been implicated in the recent outbreak of salmonella contamination in eggs.)
In a letter to Congress in July, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cited “compelling evidence” of a “clear link between antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.”
As drug-resistant strains of microbes evolve on the farms, they are passed along in meat sold in grocery stores. They can infect people as they handle the uncooked product or when eating, if cooking is not thorough. The dangerous strains can also enter the environment via manure or the clothes of farm workers.
Genetic studies of drug-resistant E. coli strains found on poultry and beef ingrocery stores and strains in sick patients have found them to be virtually identical, and further evidence also indicated that the resistant microbes evolved on farms and were transferred to consumers, said Dr. James R. Johnson, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota. Hospitals now find that up to 30 percent of urinary infections do not respond to the front-line treatments, ciprofloxacin and the drug known as Bactrim or Septra, and that resistance to key newer antibiotics is also emerging. E. coli is also implicated in serious blood, brain and other infections.
“For those of us in the public health community, the evidence is unambiguously clear,”
Dr. Johnson said. “Most of the E. coli resistance in humans can be traced to food-animal sources.”
Excenel RTU antibiotic at Elite Pork
Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.
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