Livestock on Drugs and Government Agencies Run by Livestock Producers

CBS News Says:



The livestock producers who feed antibiotics to animals in meat factories say:


It's OK because the FDA owned and operated by the animal factories says it's OK.

Note the repeated and continuous use of the word "farm"?  This building could be located anywhere they could get a permit.  This operation is not dependent on a farmlike environment or anything having to do with farming.  Why?  Because it is not a farm, it is an animal factory.

To Get Our Farm Animals Off Drugs, First Get Our Politicians Off Farm (and Drug) Money

By DAVID KIRBY
When it comes to all the addictions that plague our society, there are two that rarely get enough attention, let alone a badly needed intervention: Our factory farms' addiction to low-dose antibiotics, and our politicians' addiction to high-octane cash from mega industries like Big Ag and Big Pharma.

This week, the Obama Administration issued one of its most half-baked, half-assed policy moves to come along in quite some time. On Monday, the FDA gingerly announced that it is thinking about maybe recommending that livestock and poultry operations use anitbiotics more judiciously.

Many animal factory farms (or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations - CAFOs) rely heavily on sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics mixed into animal feed to prevent disease and make their animals grow faster. Operators can buy these pharmaceuticals by the barrellfull at a feed store, without a prescription and without the supervision of a vet. According to some figures, up to 70% of all US antibiotics are given to farm animals.

Most CAFOs need these drugs to make a profit. Take the antibiotics away and many would not be able to cram so many animals into such a tight confinement without those creatures getting sick and dying. And without these drugs, the indistrialist would not be able to get their pigs and chickens to market with the warp speed they are now able to achieve - resulting in more feed, less profit.

But low-dose antibiotic use, many scientists contend, can lead to high-risk antbiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistant bacteria now threaten millions of people around the world, and who knows what new Sci-Fi superbug may currently be incubating in the filth and feces of some jam-packed hog factory reeking nearby a schoolyard in, say, North Carolina?

Take MRSA: It now kills more American than AIDS, and some of it is coming from pork producers.

Obama's FDA is clearly worried, but not worried enough to infuriate industrial agriculture - which pours millions into lobbying and campaign warchests each year - and Big Pharma - which quietly pulls in billions each year from hawking drugs to animal factories.

"Developing strategies for reducing (antibiotic) resistance is critically important for protecting both public and animal health," FDA draft guidelines published in Monday's Federal Register said.

And FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, MD told reporters that "This is an urgent public health issue. To preserve the (the drugs') effectiveness, we simply must use them as judiciously as possible. We are seeing the emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogens" and "the overall weight of evidence supports the conclusion that using medically important antimicrobial drugs for production purposes is not appropriate."

It's not appropriate, but we're still going to allow it. "We're not expecting people to pick up this guidance and change their practice tomorrow," he said. "This is the first step in the FDA establishing the principles from which we could then move, if necessary, toward other mechanisms of oversight, which is regulation."

Ah yes, "regulation." I remember that quaint concept.

If this is such an "urgent public health issue," then why not just ban the practice outright? The FDA has that authority, and it would bring our animal production practices closer to those found in more advanced nations like Canada and the EU countries.

So why only a "recommendation" - Isn't that akin to "recommending" that offshore oil rigs employ the safest technology possible?

The answer, of course, is money - and the official timidity it buys. In 2008, Pharma gave Obama $2.14 million and Big Ag kicked in $2.26 million, according to Open Secrets.

In return, the Obama Administration has shown it will mostly confront Big Ag only on environmental issues - and even then the efforts are not what activists would like. But when it comes to other practices, such as feeding chicken crap to cows and penicillin to pigs, they have so far refused (to quote a phrase) to step on anyone's throat.

As for Pharma, I cannot name a single thing the President has done that would displease that immensely powerful sector - though I am happy to be proven wrong.

Meanwhile, animal industrialists will fight any ban on farm animal drugs, and will probably even oppose this milquetoast FDA "recommendation." They claim the widespread use of antibiotics in CAFOs poses no threat to humans, and that most of the drugs used in poultry and livestock production are for treating sick animals (a practice that is opposed by no one).

But that is simply not the case. Farm and feed magazines are overflowing with ads for antibiotics that promise "Fast growth" and "Record time to market," not, "We'll make your sick sow feel better!" Meanwhile, Danish pig farmers are doing just fine after adjusting to raising their animals without growth promoting drugs. US pig producers can certainly do the same.

But if the Obama Administration won't step on the throat of Big Ag, who will? Congress?

Don't bet on it.

The "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act" (PAMTA) - introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and supported by candidate Obama in 2008 - is languishing in Congress. The bill would phase out non-therapeutic use of medically important antibiotics in farming, without restricting them for sick animals or treating pets.

The bill's opponents include powerful Democrats from, you guessed it, states filled with factory farms. They are unmoved by sensible arguments made by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Practice, or the American Public Health Association. They want money.

If we want to wean our farm pigs off drugs meant for people, then we first must wean our DC pigs off campaign cash donated by Big Ag and Big Pharma.

David Kirby is author of the book "Animal Factory - The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment" (St. Martin's Press).

Comedians on Eating Animals

Cows on Drugs

by Donald Kennedy
Op-Ed Contributor to the New York Times
April 17, 2010

Now that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one wouldn’t raise any taxes or make any further changes to our health insurance system, so it could be quickly passed by Congress with an outpouring of bipartisan support. Or could it?

More than 30 years ago, when I was commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, we proposed eliminating the use of penicillin and two other antibiotics to promote growth in animals raised for food. When agribusiness interests persuaded Congress not to approve that regulation, we saw firsthand how strong politics can trump wise policy and good science.

Even back then, this nontherapeutic use of antibiotics was being linked to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans. To the leading microbiologists on the F.D.A.’s advisory committee, it was clearly a very bad idea to fatten animals with the same antibiotics used to treat people. But the American Meat Institute and its lobbyists in Washington blocked the F.D.A. proposal.

In 2005, one class of antibiotics, fluoroquinolones, was banned in the production of poultry in the United States. But the total number of antibiotics used in agriculture is continuing to grow. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of this use is in animals that are healthy but are vulnerable to transmissible diseases because they live in crowded and unsanitary conditions.

In testimony to Congress last summer, Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the F.D.A., estimated that 90,000 Americans die each year from bacterial infections they acquire in hospitals. About 70 percent of those infections are caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one powerful antibiotic.

That’s why the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Pharmacists Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of County and City Health Officials are urging Congress to phase out the nontherapeutic use in livestock of antibiotics that are important to humans.

Antibiotic resistance is an expensive problem. A person who cannot be treated with ordinary antibiotics is at risk of having a large number of bacterial infections, and of needing to be treated in the hospital for weeks or even months. The extra costs to the American health care system are as much as $26 billion a year, according to estimates by Cook County Hospital in Chicago and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a health policy advocacy group.

Agribusiness argues — as it has for 30 years — that livestock need to be given antibiotics to help them grow properly and keep them free of disease. But consider what has happened in Denmark since the late 1990s, when that country banned the use of antibiotics in farm animals except for therapeutic purposes. The reservoir of resistant bacteria in Danish livestock shrank considerably, a World Health Organization report found. And although some animals lost weight, and some developed infections that needed to be treated with antimicrobial drugs, the benefits of the rule exceeded those costs.

It’s 30 years late, but Congress should now pass the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would ban industrial farms from using seven classes of antibiotics that are important to human health unless animals or herds are ill, or pharmaceutical companies can prove the drugs’ use in livestock does not harm human health.

The pharmaceutical industry and agribusiness face the difficult challenge of developing antimicrobials that work specifically against animal infections without undermining the fight against bacteria that cause disease in humans. But we don’t have the luxury of waiting any longer to protect those at risk of increasing antibiotic resistance.


Donald Kennedy, a former commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, is a professor emeritus of environmental science at Stanford.

Maniacal Meat Industry Sensitive to Criticism Boohoo

by Tom Philpott at http://www.grist.org/  

The Farm Bureau is none too happy with the EPA today for publishing a blog post urging Americans to give up meat.

The post in question was written by an EPA intern and recounts her decision to stop eating meat. The author, Nicole Reising, cites the "environmental effects of meat production" and urges readers to stop eating meat.

The American Farm Bureau Federation issued a statement today decrying the post as disrespectful to ranchers.

"While this is a position taken by an intern of the agency, EPA should control its blog space," said AFBP President Bob Stallman. "What is written on its blog comes across as its official position toward farmers and ranchers that it regulates and shows a terrible disregard for them and the agriculture industry."

To be clear, the American Farm Bureau Federation calls itself the "Voice of Agriculture," but it's really the voice of industrial agriculture--and the few companies that benefit from it. To say that the EPA "regulates" concentrated-animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) is a bit fanciful. As the Washington Post recently put it:

Despite its impact, manure has not been as strictly regulated as more familiar pollution problems, like human sewage, acid rain or industrial waste. The Obama administration has made moves to change that but already has found itself facing off with farm interests, entangled in the contentious politics of poop.

The brazen intern in question, Nicole Reising, had proposed--without considering the feelings of meat-industry execs or CAFO operators!--that "Regulations can be made to help prevent the effects of meat production, but the easiest way to lessen the environmental impacts is to become a vegetarian or vegan."

Over on TNR, Brad Plumer quibbles with Reising: "if you're trying to tamp down on the consequences of meat production, the 'easiest' approach may be to start small and just convince people to eat less meat, rather than swearing off it altogether."

I would quibble with Reising and Plumer. Habits form and congeal over decades. Historically, meat has been dear; it's now cheap largely due to specific government action and inaction over the past 30 years.

People aren't going to cut back on meat because EPA interns and political bloggers want them to. Curbing the ruinous practices of the meat industry starts with enforcing the regulations already on the books; and that means a new commitment on the part of Reising's bosses at the EPA, as well as leaders at FDA and USDA, to make the meat industry pay for the messes it creates.

When that happens, people will surely eat less meat--and the meat that they do eat will tend to come from ecologically robust agriculture, and not the dark, Satanic meat mills that now dominate.

USDA says meat supply routinely tainted with harmful residues

By Tom Philpott from http://www.grist.org/

Next time you're at an eatery whose sourcing practices you don't trust, avoid the veal. Skip the burger, too. Those are the immediate takeaways from this stomach-turning report (read in PDF) from the USDA's Office of the Inspector General. The long-term takeaways are more profound--and disturbing.

The report focuses on the USDA's system for keeping hazardous chemical residues--"veterinary drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals"-- out of the meat supply. You know, meat--the stuff that Americans eat more than a half a pound of per day, on average.

How is the agency doing at this critical task? From reading the report, I'd describe its system as sieve-like--but that would be unfair to sieves. After all, those kitchen implements do at least catch most of the solid bits suspended in a liquid. The USDA routinely lets chemical residues flow right into the nation's meat supply--without catching a damned thing.

The problem is not trivial, as the report makes clear:

Residues of drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals differ from microbiological pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria Monocytogenes, which the public more readily associates with food safety. While cooking meat properly can destroy these pathogens before they are consumed, no amount of cooking will destroy residues.

In fact ... "In some cases, heat may actually break residues down into components that are more harmful to consumers." [Emphasis mine.]

Evidently, the problem is worst of all for meat from animals raised on dairy farms. Such cows find their way into the beef supply in two ways. "Spent" dairy cows--ie, ones that are too sick or old to lactate--get slaughtered for beef. Their meat is so tough that it's mainly used as hamburger. As for veal, much of the U.S. veal market is supplied by the male offspring of dairy cows. Such animals are known as "bob veal."

According to the report, "Plants handling [spent] dairy cows and bob veal were, in 2008, responsible for over 90 percent of residue violations found."

Now, the USDA's meat safety arm, the FSIS, knows full well that beef-processing plants that deal with dairy cows tend have the great bulk of residue trouble. But get this, from the report:

FSIS allowed such plants to continue treating residue problems as "not reasonably likely to occur"--the determination that would allow plants to justify not implementing additional procedures to control residues.

One such plant had 211 violations in 2008, the report states--and still was able to operate as though such violations were "not reasonably likely to occur."

Okay, so why is meat from dairy cows so likely to be tainted with residue? The report puts it bluntly:

Some producers provide antibiotics to dairy cows in order to eliminate an infection after a calf is born. If the producer perceives that the cow is not improving, he may sell the animal to a slaughter facility so that he can recoup some of his investment in the animal before it dies. If the producer does not wait long enough for the antibiotic to clear the animal's system, some of this residue will be retained in the meat that is sold to consumers.

So let's get this straight: sick cows pumped full of antibiotics are routinely being slaughtered for burger meat.

As for veal ...

Farmers are prohibited from selling milk for human consumption from cows that have been medicated with antibiotics (as well as other drugs) until the withdrawal period is over; so instead of just disposing of this tainted milk, producers feed it to their calves. When the calves are slaughtered, the drug residue from the feed or milk remains in their meat, which is then sold to consumers.

Now do you see why I advised against ordering veal and burgers in the opening paragraph?

Recall that "spent" dairy cows were at the center of the notorious 143 million-pound beef recall back in 2008, when Humane Society investigators caught workers at a California meat plant cruelly prodding "downer" cows through a slaughter line. Long-time Meat Wagon readers will remember that, despite the recall, 37 million pounds of that suspect meat made it to school cafeterias. That's because school cafeterias, with their tight budgets, are forced to buy the cheapest beef possible. And as we learned in the downer-cow scandal, the cheapest beef possible comes from plants that deal with spent dairy cows.

Putting everything together, this report is telling us that meat tainted with residues is routinely making it into school cafeterias.

Well, that's the stuff I found most scandalous in this amazing report. There's more, too. Apparently, for a lot of nasty chemical residues, the EPA has no minimum tolerance levels. And because the EPA has no minimum tolerance levels, the USDA just lets them pass right on through to the public.

And get this: when the agency positively identifies residue-tainted meat, it ... does nothing about it: "We also found that FSIS does not recall meat adulterated with harmful residue, even when it is aware that the meat has failed its laboratory tests."

To me, this report dramatizes the withering away of the federal government's ability to protect the public from the negligence of powerful industries. Just as coal mines continue operating despite repeated safety violations, the meat industry churns out tainted product as a matter of course ... with the full knowledge of government regulators. (All of this reminded me of the study a while back showing that "people who eat meat and poultry have significantly higher levels of common flame retardants compared to vegetarians.")

The analogy between residues in meat and unsafe coal mines goes only so far, though. Every once in a while in a coal mine, a spectacular "accident" happens, drawing attention to the safety issue. For residue-tainted meat, the consequences are mainly subtle and cumulative. As the report puts it, "the effects of residue are generally chronic as opposed to acute, which means that they will occur over time, as an individual consumes small traces of the residue." In other words, heavy eaters of industrial meat--i.e., literally hundreds of millions of Americans, many of them kids--are like the frog in the pot, not noticing that the water is slowly getting hotter and hotter.

Rest assured: the FSIS swears it will correct all the wrongs exposed in this report. But also consider this: the USDA's Office of the Inspector General pointed out many of the same issues in a 2008 report (PDF). The FSIS swore it would make everything better then, too. The current report was explicitly written to assess the steps that have been taken since then, which doesn't inspire confidence.

King Corn versus Industrial Meat

by Tom Philpott from Grist.org

Who wins when King Kong and Godzilla go at it? The audience--at least those folks who can avoid getting stomped by the behemoths. And here we have an entertaining cage match between two powerful, entrenched lobbies: King Corn and Industrial Meat. The topic is ethanol. The corn lobby wants the federal government to keep ramping up the goodies for corn-based ethanol. The meat lobby will accept ethanol goodies to a certain point--but roars like an abused CAFO pig when government ethanol goodies push up the price of corn significantly. The meat industry, you see, can only turn a profit when corn is cheap.

My take: a pox on both their camps. We need less corn and less low-quality, resource-intensive meat. The government should eliminate all ethanol goodies and give Corn Belt farmers incentives to transition to other crops: grass-finished beef, vegetables, etc. But of course, no one in Washington listens to me: I don't represent a powerful, entrenched industry. Here's what we're likely to get instead: more ethanol goodies, and more incentive for farmers to increase corn production--soil, climate, Gulf of Mexico be damned. Corn prices will hover in the $3-$5/bushel range, and the meat industry will slash costs in other areas to maintain profitability. In other words, pretty much business as usual.

But ... Corn Belt farmers and their surrounding communities would benefit economically if they at least partially exited the co(r)n game, transitioned some of their land to fruits and vegetables, and sold the produce within the region. So says a new study from the Leopold Center. The study focused on the Upper Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

In one scenario, the researchers estimated what would happen if farms in those states supplied seasonal fruits and vegetables to the region's 28 metropolitan areas with at least 250,000 people. (Currently, the vast bulk of produce consumed in the region is trucked in from elsewhere.)

To do so, about 200,000 acres would have to be transitioned from corn and soy (that's a tiny amount of land in Corn Belt terms--about two-thirds the size of a typical Iowa farm county). "Considering all relevant multipliers, that farm-level production would support 6,694 jobs and $284.61 million in labor income in the six-state area," the researchers conclude. Meanwhile, keeping that same amount of land in corn and soy supports 1,892 jobs and $42.517 million in labor incomes. In other words, there would be a massive net economic gain from transitioning that much land to fruit and veg.

Seems like many farmers in the Midwest would do well to cancel their National Corn Growers Association memberships and start thinking about what it would take to grow and market veggies.