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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."
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.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I always said they would be the downfall of humanity.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Just don't approve anything. In about 6 months you'll get the funds you need.
A simple 'The citizens of the US our are primary concern. If it is not appropriatly tested to our satisfaction, it won't be ok'd.'
Tnhen they can use great lines like:
"You are condernced for the people of this country, right Senator?"
Time to spin it back.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I'd say they are receiving sufficient funds to achieve the desired level of food safety. It's just that Congress has lowered the level.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Now that the Dems are back in the saddle, is it really "Bush's fault"?
It's cute that you think there's a significant difference between the two parties.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Disgusting. They should understand very well that human health is #1, and animal drugs is #10, period.
Any "guidance" serves nothing but to make up excuses that tries to justify animal drugs over human health, for pure "economic" reasons (i.e. greed).
When was the last time you heard a government department say:
"We have all the funds we need. We'd like to thank the taxpayers." ?
Yeah, me neither.
For the dollar.
You're missing the point.
It's not a fear that this antibiotic will have a negative effect on humans. The problem is that, by overusing this drug, it will lose its potency. Many antibiotics have already been rendered useless thanks to careless overuse, and this one has been deliberately set aside as a last resort. If cattle farmers are allowed to use this drug it will no longer be useful for treating human infections.
The FDA is in every single way destroying a cure for life-threatening diseases in order to fellate a bunch of worthless scum-sucking factory farmers. You should be outraged, not just avoiding meat.
Antibiotics should be banned for agricultural uses. It's putting all of us at risk so that a few can make a bigger profit.
The cake is a pie
What a total blunder. This "last line of defence" anti-biotics are not used in medicine for the very same reason they should NOT be used in these cattle: if we use them on any large scale before we need them then the bacteria will become resistant to one of our last defences against that particular bacterium strain. If there was a mass epidemic for one reason or the other before the resistant strain was prevalent, we could have used our back up antibiotic to effectively contain it - but if this goes through we lose that last line of defence as the antibiotic would most likely be useless against this new resistant bacteria.
some invincible strain of ecoli
E. coli is not, and has never been the problem - gram negative bacilli are fairly easy to deal with - we have loads of antibiotic families for them. The BIG problem is the various form of Staphylococci - gram positive cocci - with their built in enzymes that inactivate antibiotics plus all their other enzymes that are just perfect for digesting tissue.
If I had to choose between a gram negative and gram positive infection, I'd choose the gram negative. Shoot me full of an aminoglucoside or a fluoroquinolone and I'll probably be ok. But gram positives... oops.
This stuff is a _BIG_ deal. Vets have been using Vancomycin on chicken farms for YEARS. The more antibiotic we put into the environment, the more we encourage resistant strains. There is no doubt that those strains eventually transmit their resistance genes to human pathogens.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm a farmer/cattle rancher and i actuality get to respond to something on slashdot. I'm so happy. I can say that this really worries me because about 10 years ago we got a new drug Micotil for treating cattle. it would kill anything cattle got (people too if you inadvertently stabbed yourself) now doses for cattle have doubled or even tripled the treatment times need to be increased and the effectiveness, (in my view from my experience ie completely non scientific) is about 1/3 of what it was when Micotil first came out. Maby instead of looking for better antibiotics for the cattle we should be looking at why there are getting sick to begin with, because virtually all cattle that go through the Industrial livestock system get sick.
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
It's ironic that in light of the recent analysis of the use of the term "evolution" covered here on slashdot that the summary would suggest that the bacteria will "develop a resistance to these drugs." Resistance to the drugs will will evolve, if we're to use the proper term for the process.
As the original article in that earlier discussion noted, if we'd use the appropriate term when discussing these issues, it's more likely that people will realize that understanding evolution is essential to understand this and a variety of other public health issues, such as emerging diseases, cancer, etc. And maybe, just maybe, science classes would be a touch more likely to teach science without winding up in the court system.
______ This mind intentionally left blank.
how likely do you think it is that the FDA simply cannot get enough fundage to make sure our food is safe? that excuse was provided to keep people focusing on the actual problem.
im sure alot of people will read this and think 'eh, so what' but it is in fact one of the biggest issues of our lifetimes.
monsanto has been selling posilac (rBGH) for a long time now, and whats particularly fucked up about this is that posilac is made for one reason- so that each cow produces more milk. why is that so fucked up? because we are, and have been, for a long time, over producing milk. there are MANY companies that pay dairy farmers to produce LESS milk or none at all. so one of the first new products monsanto gives us (since agent orange) is a drug that produces more of what we do not need.
rBGH causes something called mastitis in cows which is a inflammation of the udders, when this happens the farmer has to start injecting mass amounts of antibiotics to try to keep it under control.
it is PROVEN (and swept under the carpet) science that we HAVE ALREADY created antibiotic resistant bacteria because of the mass amounts of antibiotics the cows are drugged with. its been known for a long long time now.
monsanto is a very dangerous company and many people would call me a nutjob for saying so, but you need only look at the facts surrounding how they got this shit approved in the first place to tell that it doesnt pass the smell test.
when they were trying to get this approved by the FDA they had a researcher named Margaret Miller to put together a report to submit to the FDA concerning the safety of monsanto's growth hormones.
right before the report was submitted to the FDA Margaret left monsanto and was hired by the FDA. guess what her first job was for the FDA? to approve the report she herself had just written.
congrats, capitalism.
They produce resistant strains precisely because they're so effective at killing bacteria. They kill off everything except that tiny proportion that have a mutation that protects them from the antibiotic. Those survivers then rapidly become the dominant strain and suddenly your wonder drug *doesn't* kill the majority of bacteria any more.
In the UK we dont immunise animals that are going to end up down the food chain to prevent antibodies from passing down the food chain. And ofcorse to prevent resistant strains of the desieses from forming.
This is why at the last foot and mouth outbreak we (UK) killed off all the infected stock. France etc treated their animals.
Anywhere I see "industrial" I see unsustainable practices for maximal profits being done.
Doesn't matter WHERE I see it. It just is.
Pack a bunch of dumb animals into a tight space, something that isn't natural- you're going to get problems.
The industry's answer, drug them animals up to offset the problem. Which isn't really an answer.
As the Poultry industry seems to be figuring out- raising chickens and harvesting eggs more akin to the way
one would do in the old days on a farm is actually better than the other way, costs only a little more to
do, and produces much more desirable results (The eggs are more nutritious, as is the chicken meat- and they
taste oh, so much better...) for only slightly more retail cost. The same goes for bread, etc. We've improved
our ways of doing things such that doing things sustainably is more valuable than doing them for the lowest
costs- and for each and every "cost saving" thing, we damage our health, etc.
High Fructose Corn Syrup - while it's cheaper than cane sugar and other sweeteners, HFCS makes type II diabetics
out of people. And we've adulterated the food supply with the damn stuff.
Nutrasweet - I won't even begin to start on THAT stuff.
Antibiotics given to animals indescriminately - antibiotic resistant bacteria that cause problems worse than the
the expense of food would be if you'd back off a little on production.
When will the food industry wise up? When will someone cashier the FDA as it currently is because
it doesn't do ANYTHING of what it's supposed to do. It doesn't allow good drugs to be. It doesn't
allow good food to happen. It doesn't prevent bad drugs from getting on the market. It doesn't
prevent bad food production practices and additives from getting on the market. But it is the final
arbiter on things for this country.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The Bush Administration is still the administration. Congress has very little control over the day to day actions of political appointees like the Vet Chief of the FDA who appears to be masterminding this unbelievably stupid action. They could call him in for a question and answer session, but given the insanity that the administration has and continues to bring us ov er the last 7 years, its hard to know where they should even start. I guess since we're all God's Children (those of us who are reborn, anyway), God will just take care of the details once the effectivness of even last-line antibiotics starts to fade.
It's cute that you think there's a significant difference between the two parties.
It's cuter that people get modded up for repeating this nonsense whenever there's a political discussion. The differences aren't as remarkable as larger party differences in other countries, but to say there's no "significant difference" is absurd, unless you don't consider things such as rights to abortion, rights to marry who you want and freedom from religion important.
(Yes, I realize there are democrats against the above things. But the party's platforms spell out clear differences).
I read something written by natural dairy farmers about their experience helping conventional farmers convert their operations to more sustainable methodology. The converteres were like, "since you can't use antibiotics, what do you do when your cows get sick?" They said that their cows simply don't get sick, because they're properly cared for.
I haven't needed antibiotics since I fired the Medical-Industrial Complex 7 years ago. I got fed up with their inability to do anything for my chronic ear infections besides antibiotic drops and pills. There is a time and a place for everything, but these drugs certainly don't belong in the regular veterinary repertoire.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Page four, paragraph 3:
Oooooops. (I do hope we manage to do a better job over on this side of the pond though, we aren't making new drugs fast enough to be this sloppy with the ones we have)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
What's in that milk?
"The sale of Posilac is illegal in virtually every developed country with the exception of the United States. Recent studies have shown that lab rats absorbed IGF-1 during the digestive process, which subsequently caused cysts and other cancerous growths to form in the test animals flesh. Despite numerous official requests for the FDA to revoke the approval for Monsanto's product, no such action has been taken thus far."
Don't try and tell people though.
As for FDA, I can't even begin to tell you how badly it's managed. Thankfully they thought about a perfect side dish to our Dolly steaks. Maybe we shouldn't wonder why health care costs are skyrocketing and people are getting fatter...
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
BSE ("mad cow" disease) is thought to be caused by prions, not bacteria, last I knew. In other words, this antibiotic has nothing to do with it.
That said, this is positively horrible that we're wasting a potent, last-line-of-defense antibiotic on cows. Why can't they use the antibiotics to which there's already a lot of resistance, anyhow, instead of wasting this one? I mean, you can just shoot a sick cow and dispose of it. I sincerely hope they're not suggesting we do that with sick people.
When that many doctor's organizations are opposing this, it makes you wonder how the hell they can be expected to approve it. Well, okay, I admit to not wondering that much. In the end, I have to think that it all has everything to do with little slips of paper with green ink on them and not very much to do with medicine.
E. coli is not, and has never been the problem - gram negative bacilli are fairly easy to deal with - we have loads of antibiotic families for them
If I had to choose between a gram negative and gram positive infection, I'd choose the gram negative.
I'm a physician and my friend who is an infectious disease doc happened to be next to me when I read your comment. We both aggreed, this comment is just plain wrong. I'm not sure where to start. Its wrong on many levels mostly because its just too simplistic. My time is limited unfortunatly, so I'm going to be brief. Gram negative infections are common and they can be serious, especially if they make there way into the blood. There are a number of highly resistant gram negative bacteria that are incredably difficult to treat as they are pan-resistant in some cases to every antibiotic avaiable so combinations have to be used for any effectiveness. It is not uncommon to do synergy studies for gram negative bacteria so that we can find combinations of antibiotics that will work because one will not. I personally have never heard of (nor has my friend) needing synergy studies in a gram positives bacteria - please correct me if we are wrong. Every gram positive I've treated or heard of has been at least susceptible to one antibiotic, either vanc or linezolid, usually both. Of course, gram positive infections can be very serious, but so are gram negative infections. I'm not sure at all where you are coming from in your statement. I apologize for the brevity...I wish I had more time.
the beef industry is throwing our safety out the window for immediate profits.
While I agree that the motive is profit, I don't really understand why the industry is moving that way. Organic Beef is $14 per pound vs $6 per pound for the chemistry set beef. Surely there is just as much profit to be made with improved quality, vs cheaper production.
We are all just people.
Every gram of antibiotics administered is one more gram released into the environment where it will create resistant microbes. The microbes do not care if the antibiotic was administered in tiny doses to a 2-year-old with an ear infection or in massive doses to a 600 pound cow as a feed supplement to make it grow faster and bigger. EVERY antibiotic given to cattle in massive doses has quickly lost its effectiveness in the human population to the point that resistant microbes are now very common. The cow excretes most of the antibiotics into the environment where they create new resistant microbe populations that then migrate worldwide. The public health people hector doctors to avoid giving antibiotic prescriptions unless absolutely necessary and then the FDA does something like this. This is criminally negligent and irresponsible and some people at the FDA need to be brought to trial and thrown into prison.
September 30, 1980-- The Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it "has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive."
January 1981-- Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, states in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld says he will use his political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means, to make sure it gets approved.
January 21, 1981-- Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan's transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, hand picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner.
[...]
July 15, 1981-- In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products.
[...]
September, 1983-- FDA Commissioner Hayes resigns under a cloud of controversy about his taking unauthorized rides aboard a General Foods jet. (General foods is a major customer of NutraSweet) Burson-Marsteller, Searle's public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet's major users), immediately hires Hayes as senior scientific consultant.
You can't take the sky from me...
... because I like studying social change. Maybe there should be some here, read on:
/Food/ and Drug Administration doing something about this? See all them farmers throwing out corn because we paid them to do so? How about you pay them to graze cattle? Subsidize RESPONSIBLE farming and then guess what? It will trickle down the line. If what I put in me is healthier from the start, I get healthier. Oh, and guess what I can do when I feel better? I can produce more. So get on it, you capitalist fucks! It'll make your health care costs go down, too!
I did a kind of self experiment starting this school year. I gave up smoking, fast food, etc etc. Not that I was unhealthy by any means, no sir, 16 minute 2 mile i was more than happy with considering the pack a day habit, but I changed what I ate.
McDick's double cheese burger? Nah. 80/20 lean beef and a george foreman. And a fuckin' apple instead of fries and a shake. Ciggy? No way. How about a glass of water and a deep breath (hey I can do that now!) when I'm stressed out?
Ya wanna know what happened? That 16 minute mile is well under 14 now. I wake up when the sun's up and I'm moving before the coffee pot even starts, not the other way around.
The best side effect of all, however, is that i just plain don't. get. sick.
A cow is supposed to eat grass. A cow's supposed to get a little sick now and then, and if a cow gets really sick, a cow should get really shot and buried. Instead, we decide to feed cows, well, corn and chopped up sick cows.
Now, if putting good stuff in ME keeps me from getting sick, why would it not work on a cow? Why the HELL isn't the
Now, I understand that shit doesn't change that quick. But this isn't about getting cars that shit out water on the roads, this is about eating good. Hybrid cars aren't much different than a regular car, but food that was "grown", not "manufactured" TASTES a hell of a lot better and you can measure results for yourself within weeks. I think we should give it a try.
I'm a physician and my friend who is an infectious disease doc happened to be next to me when I read your comment.
;)
I'm a GP - so I won't argue with an infectologist. I'm also in the 3rd world. We barely have access to vanco in our (poor) public healthcare system - much less linezolid and the other new anti-staph drugs. If you have access to linezolid - great, I agree with you.
For us if we run into MRSA that patient is pretty much screwed, whereas with a gram negative - despite having to use two or more drugs like genta/clinda, we can usually do something for the patient. I'm by no means an infectologist however
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Its interesting to hear your perspective. Obviously our patient populations are quite different. I practice in the US, so our access to vanc and linezolid is taken for granted. Its usually the chronically ill type of individuals who get sick from gram negatives and we probably have a higher percentage of those - geriatric, nursing home, cystic fibrosis, chemothearpy and bone marrow transplant type of patients.
Of course we have a large number of patients who frequently get gram positive infections because of chronic indwelling central cathaters - usually the dialysis patients (Gram postive infections in the US are becoming much more common actually because our dialysis population is exploding with all the diabetes, obesity and hypertension.) I can't imagine how you can manage without linezolid or vanc for in hospital types of patients. Isn't vanc generic by now? Obviously, linezolid is ungodly expensive. I would have thought vanc would be as accessable as any other IV medication. Is your MRSA not bactrim, clinda or floroquinolone sensitive. At least where I live, our MRSA is almost universally sensitive to Clinda and Bactrim and often to flouros.
It has been shown repeatedly that if you take away the antibiotic from the environment the resistance does not get passed on as it is no longer useful. After one generation with zero exposure to the antibiotic they will not pass on the necessary genes. It's a simple concept. The problem is that you could stop using an antibiotic today but it will take quite some time before it will be removed from the surrounding environment so the bacteria will remain resistant until the environment is cleansed. This is why I suggest an interval of a year or perhaps even longer.
Of course I alluded to the bigger issue of using any antibiotics at all for your food which is the real problem, bacterial resistance is remarkably easy to manage.
That is a symptom of the underlying problem I was alluding to in my last post. Factory farming will always result in this end-game. Every-time you put a lot of one species close together they will spread disease. Giving them a little more space and proper conditions and remove the antibiotics and stop poisoning the country or make a little extra money. As long as money is the driving force behind our food supply we'll have to deal with people taking money over our health.
It's capitalism at its finest, 1000 small farms eventually consolidate to 4 large farms because its more cost effective. Of course the quality of the product diminishes along with the diversity we see on our shelves. Fortunately alternatives still exist with organic farming.
The only force with sufficient power to counteract the power of government-business collusion is the force of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed against the top managers of the FDA, the top managers of the cattle-processing companies, and all the middle men between the cattle-processing companies and the supermarket. Using the courts to suck sufficient money out of these money-grubbing scum (who would sacrifice the lives of children to antibiotic-resistant bacteria for the sake of a buck) is the only way to force the scum to deal fairly and humanely with the American people. When I say, "suck sufficient money", I mean that we should force the scum to pay so much money to the victims (of antibiotic-resistant bacteria) that the scum can afford only to live in a studio apartment and to take the bus to work in the halfway house.
Once someone dies (indirectly) due to the feeding of Cefquinome to cattle, then we initiate the multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Financially bleed the scum until the scum wishes that it were dead.
Feed Cefquinome to cattle? "Go ahead. Make my day!"
With 30% dead, lots of regular jobs are going undone, and regular things aren't being bought.
The music store only has employees for a few days of the week. They have to shut down on the other days. Nobody wants to be out buying music anyway though. The rent doesn't get paid. The store closes. The landlord now has an empty storefront. That hurts business for his other tenents. Also, he still has to pay his taxes. The Burger King can't staff their place. Do they just close up shop?
Businesses find themselves needing to shrink and consolidate, fast. That is majorly disruptive. Facilities must be closed. Employees may need to move; some will refuse.
Everything becomes inefficient as businesses collapse. Shortages come and go, interspersed with surplusses that get wasted.
Whole towns need to be abandoned. When a small place loses the only food store, the people have to move elsewhere.
The police are in disarray, just like every other organization. The now-idle masses are starving, bored, irrational, and willing to take great risks because death appears likely anyway. The New Orleans looting was nothing, really. Imagine something like that accross the whole world. There will be no help coming from outside.
Eventually, the farms aren't tended. The cattle aren't fed. Transportation is unreliable. Fuel may be mostly unavailable. Real food shortages set in.
Way more than 30% die. Maybe 99% or more. Very few of us have a backyard garden that can completely feed the family.
People fall back on idiotic superstitions, as they have done since the very first humans.
Welcome to the Dark Ages II. (this time, Protestant and Islamic)
How could Gore have voted for the invasion since he was no longer a Senator in 2003? He couldn't.
--
My personal impression of US capitalist "libertarians" is that they come off as spoiled brats who want to be able to do whatever they want, Tragedy of the Commons be damned.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Well, one of my farmer friends grows vegetables, and he described to me the lengthy rules and regulations on the subject. To have his land certified "Organic," he needed to meet to strict requirements. Land which had been used traditionally, (non-organically) has to remain unsprayed and untreated with synthetic fertilizers for 8 years, afterwhich the certifiers tested the land for residue. A farm upwind of his had been spraying during that time, and the residue was measured in his soil. As a result, he has yet to be certified.
However, "Organic", as you point out, does not mean "Free Range" or "Ethically Produced". It's just a standard by which chemical and genetic qualities are measured. --But it's the only standard currently attempting to set a worthy bar with regard to the chemical purity of food production. The FDA by comparison is riddled with corruption and is heavily influenced by lobyists. There are numerous shameful examples of how the government food safety bodies have sided with industry over public health.
I would also hesitate before I called the American food supply safe. Safe implies a great deal; just with regard to GM foods, there are a lot of unknowns, (as well as several nasty 'knowns'), but such foods are largely unregulated. In Canada, it is not legally required that such things as Canola Oil be appropriately labeled if they have come from GM crops. There have been studies which show marked reason for there to be concern over this.
Meats which come through the orthodox system, I simply cannot find any rational reason to trust. One of the reasons I moved away from a large city was so that I could meet and know my food producers. It is true; some of them are not people I'd want to support, while others are stellar examples. In the end, no human system of labeling is going to be entirely trustworthy. You have to get out there and walk in some mud to get the 'dirt' so-to-speak. Based on all the organic farmers I now know, I do find reason, however, to place a lot of trust with them. Certainly a great deal more than some of the jerks I've met who run the factory chicken farms around here. The difference in philosophical attitude is very often night and day.
One factory chicken farm out here was being financed by a big corporate venture, and they cajoled the local government into allowing them to put a plant right above an aquifer where many people draw their well water. People fought this for a couple of years, had impartial studies done to see what would happen to the water supply, and despite the dire test results the corporations got the go ahead. It's enough to make you see red. People who push for that kind of travesty are either stupid or evil or both. They are also the kind of people who sneer at the idea of 'Organic' foods.
So I hope you will pardon me if I come at this subject with some bias.
In the end, though, my experiences have been very positive; it's amazing what you can learn by diving into a subject! To think that I was a committed city slicker four years ago leaves me regularly amazed.
-FL
They're basically saying the current health of the cattle outweighs the health of people.
No, they're saying the current health of certain bank accounts and stock portfolios outweighs the health of people.