Objections Over Antibiotic Approved for Use in Cattle

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington post reports that the FDA is expected to approve the marketing of the new antibiotic called Cefquinome for use in cattle. This is over objections of the American medical association, the FDA advisory board and the World Health Organization. Cefquinome is from a class of highly potent 'last line of defense' antibiotics for several serious human infections. It is feared that large scale use in cattle will allow bacteria to develop a resistance to these drugs. This news follows complaints from the FDA that it is no longer getting the funds needed to do the research required for the desired level of food safety."

Comments

This goes beyond idiocy

[dsanfte]

This goes beyond idiocy... This is blatant pandering to the cattle lobby at the expense of our health. Everyone of us who might one day get MRSA, or flesh-eating disease...

Any increased use of these drugs, especially on bacteria present in the food supply, is asking for disaster. When a federal agency start making bad decisions for corporate lobbyists that will cost real lives, it's time for heads to roll.

Re:This goes beyond idiocy

[Frumious Wombat]

Or, we could try a free-market approach: We charge ranchers market-rates for grazing lands and water, we stop propping up corn-states with subsidies so that dirt-cheap corn isn't available for feedlot use as clearance prices, and we treat feedlots as the industrial polluters they are, and regulate them accordingly. While we're at it, label beef openly. You should be able to pick up a package of beef, look at the label, and see "feedlot-raised herford routinely injected with the following antibiotics@concentration@interval just in case". Next to it would be, "grass-fed, open-range, dusted for ticks and certified treated only for illness and not within 120 days of slaughter". End result: a whole whack of inefficient cattlemen go under (at least we won't have to list to the whining of rugged individualists who only need continual tax subsidies but no other gub'mint involvement to stay in business), meat prices rise a bit, successful ranchers will go back to open-range grazing like Argentina does, and possibly some of that fertilizer-gulping corn will be plowed under and prarie grass for grazing planted in its place.

With better animal-husbandry (don't feed a grazing animal expecting a high-fiber diet acidic corn and make it stand in one place all day), you'll get healthier animals, and less need for antibiotics and other promoters to make them grow. And before anyone starts the accusations, I eat meat and look askance at soybean-based alleged food products. These are the same people pushing irradiation of food so that they don't have to slow down slaughterhouses and worry about what bits of cattle-waste end up on or in meat. Sometimes the answer really is, "it's not a machine, and we should not be producing beef as if it was Nikes, so worry about public health first, then about m

The Big One

[DogDude]

The Big Thing that's gonna take humans down a notch won't be nuclear attack. It won't be global warming. It'll be a simple bacteria, maybe a version of something common like strep or staph that doctors just can't kill because of simple resistance. I can't wait.