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A RESEARCH PAPER THE U.S. DEP’T OF AGRICULTURE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT?
October 30, 2011
 A commercial meat chicken production house in Florida. Photo: USDA.  CLICK TO OPEN
It is a story about something the USDA allegedly does not want you – or anyone else – to know about: the connection between tons and tons of antibiotics being used on animals each year that are raised for food consumption (cows, chickens, pigs, goats, etc.) in big “factory farms” and the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections among us humans.
A new story in Mother Jones magazine by Tom Philpott focuses on a document he says the USDA does not want any of us to see: a technical review of “recent academic findings on the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections and their link with factory animal farms. The topic is a serious one. A single antibiotic-resistant pathogen, MRSA—just one of many now circulating among Americans—now claims more lives each year than AIDS.”
The curious thing says Philpott is that back in June the USDA put the review up on its National Agricultural Library website. A USDA official said the review was based on "reputed, scientific, peer-reviewed, and scholarly journals."
Really, about the only thing the paper was, was a wrap up on the state of current science “on antibiotic resistance and factory farms, not the USDA's position on the matter.”
Something probably only science geeks and geeky science and agriculture writers would ever read or care a lick about.
Then later came an odd disclaimer on the website saying the paper, “Has not been peer reviewed” and the "views expressed did not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of Agriculture."
And last Friday, the document’s original link vanished without comment from the agency's website. The only way to see the document now is through reading the Mother Jones article OR clicking on the PDF icon above and opening the report.
The implication in all this is the USDA is now “hiding” the report.
Philpott seems to think so.
UNDERSTANDING HOW THE FOOD GAME IS PLAYED
He says, “To understand the USDA's quashing of a report it had earlier commissioned, published, and praised, you first have to understand a key aspect of industrial-scale meat production.
You see, keeping animals alive and growing fast under cramped, unsanitary conditions is tricky business. One of the industry's tried-and-true tactics is low-level, daily doses of antibiotics. The practice helps keep infections down, at least in the short term, and, for reasons no one really understands, it pushes animals to fatten to slaughter weight faster.
Altogether, the US meat industry uses 29 million pounds of antibiotics every year.
To put that number in perspective, consider that we humans in the United States—in all of our prescription fill-ups and hospital stays combined—use just over 7 million pounds per year. Thus the vast bulk of antibiotics consumed in this country, some 80 percent, goes to factory animal farms.”
And therein lies the rub-adub-dub, says Philpott.
For years scientists have been freaked about the industry's reliance on antibiotics contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
That’s why the European Union took action to curtail routine antibiotic use on farms in 2006, which in turn was following Sweden’s lead, which banned the practice 20 years earlier.
“But here in the United States, the regulatory approach has been completely laissez-faire—and the meat industry would like to keep it that way. The industry claims that even though antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been found both in confined animals and supermarket meat, there's simply no evidence that livestock strains are jumping to the human population,” says Philpott.
And there is the key, says Philpott, to why that report vanished from the USDA’s website.
WHAT THE REPORT SAID THAT WAS SO SCARY TO THE OWNERS OF BIG FACTORY FARMS
That report summarized research from 63 solid academic papers and government studies. And the report found some things that are a bit troublesome when it comes to the stuff we eat that is cranked out by those big factory farms using those tons of antibiotics every year. Here’s a few of the findings from that report:
• "Use and misuse of antimicrobial drugs in food animal production and human medicine is the main factor accelerating antimicrobial resistance."
• "[F]ood animals, when exposed to antimicrobial agents, may serve as a significant reservoir of resistant bacteria that can transmit to humans through the food supply."
• "Several studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella showed that [antibiotic resistance] in Salmonella strains was most likely due to the antimicrobial use in food animals, and that most infections caused by resistant strains are acquired from the consumption of contaminated food."
• "Farmers and farm workers may get exposed to resistant bacteria by handling animals, feed, and manure. These exposures are of significant concern to public health, as they can transfer the resistant bacteria to family and community members, particularly through person-to-person contacts."
• "Resistant bacteria can also spread from intensive food animal production area to outside boundaries through contact between food animals and animals in the external environment. Insects, flies, houseflies, rodents, and wild birds play an important role in this mode of transmission. They are particularly attracted to animal wastes and feed sources from where they carry the resistant bacteria to several locations outside the animal production facility."
SHOOT THE MESSENGER AND THE MESSAGE DIES
Equally troubling writes Philpott is that the researcher who put that report together has been “silenced,” in his words.
“Not only has her report been erased from the USDA site, but she has been forbidden to talk to media. I reached her by phone Thursday. She told me that she didn't know why the report had been taken down, and that she could make no further comment. She referred me to her superior, Tara Smith of the USDA's National Agriculture Library. Smith has yet to return calls or emails,” writes Philpott.
There’s more to the story than all of this and it gets more interesting.
Philpott's piece is worth a read and you can find it here
The following are points cited in a 2009 informational campaign by the Pew Charitable Trusts:
~ Up to 70 percent of U.S. antibiotics go to farm animals that aren't sick, to offset overcrowding and poor sanitation. This practice promotes the development of deadly strains of drug-resistant bacteria that can spread to humans.
~ Consumers are exposed to resistant bacteria through the handling and consumption of contaminated meat, through produce that has been exposed to resistant bacteria in soil and water, or even through direct contact with the bacteria in the environment.
~ Antibiotic-resistant infections cost the U.S. health care system at least $4 to $5 billion per year. One reason is the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms, which promotes the development of drug-resistant diseases.
~ Each year 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur due to people eating food contaminated by dangerous pathogens and bacteria such as Salmonella and E. Coli, which are often antibiotic resistant.
~ Food-borne bacteria are more dangerous in their antibiotic-resistant forms, because they are harder to treat and may require multiple antibiotic treatments, longer hospital stays and other interventions before finally being eliminated.
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