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Florida Citrus Trees To Be Sprayed With Thousands of Kilograms of Antiobiotics (nature.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader memnock quotes Nature:
In the next month or so, orange trees across Florida will erupt in white blossoms, signalling the start of another citrus season. But this year, something different will be blowing in the winds. Farmers are preparing to spray their trees with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of two common antibiotics to combat citrus greening, a bacterial disease that has been killing Florida citrus trees for more than a decade.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of allowing growers to use streptomycin and oxytetracycline as routine treatments, spraying trees several times per year, beginning with the 'first flush' of leaves this spring. Growers in the state could end up using as much as 440,000 kilograms of the drugs. Although the compounds, which are both used in human medicine, have been sprayed on other crops in the past and applied in limited amounts to citrus groves, the scale of this application has researchers and public-health advocates alarmed....
There is little publicly available science on the long-term use of these drugs in crop settings... Critics are particularly galled because there is also little convincing evidence that spraying will keep the scourge at bay.
One Florida public radio station reports that environmental groups have delivered a petition with more than 45,000 signatures to the EPA, urging them to halt the expanded use of antibiotics.
"The fear is an increase in antibiotic-resistant diseases for humans."
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of allowing growers to use streptomycin and oxytetracycline as routine treatments, spraying trees several times per year, beginning with the 'first flush' of leaves this spring. Growers in the state could end up using as much as 440,000 kilograms of the drugs. Although the compounds, which are both used in human medicine, have been sprayed on other crops in the past and applied in limited amounts to citrus groves, the scale of this application has researchers and public-health advocates alarmed....
There is little publicly available science on the long-term use of these drugs in crop settings... Critics are particularly galled because there is also little convincing evidence that spraying will keep the scourge at bay.
One Florida public radio station reports that environmental groups have delivered a petition with more than 45,000 signatures to the EPA, urging them to halt the expanded use of antibiotics.
"The fear is an increase in antibiotic-resistant diseases for humans."
Not really. Americans are idiots, that's what it means.
It is sad because streptomycin is used commonly for people who are allergic to penicillin.
Wouldn't say commonly, there are many other options for most common infections besides streptomycin, like cephalosporins, aztreonam, or a number of non-beta lactam antibiotics. Streptomycin is used (in the US) for rare stuff like tularemia and plague (Y. pestis). Source: I am a physician
I wish we'd learn from past mistakes. Overuse of antibiotics can lead to the stronger strains of germs developing resistance to them.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
From this comment, you'd almost think that spraying antibiotics on FL citrus hasn't been happening since, well, the previous Administration.
Yeppers, this was first done during the Obama Administration (under "emergency rules", rather than on a "non-emergency" basis). For years. It was pretty much stopped in '17 after the hurricane season that year....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"Field trials" were done in the previous administration. That's how we know it doesn't work.
When you consider that entire industries have grown up to sell products like tobacco, sugar and trans fats, it's obvious that sanctions such as fines or lawsuits have little - if any - influence. Recently Boeing has highlighted that with its grossly negligent handling of the 737 MAX upgrade.
Fines, when occasionally imposed, amount to no more than pocket change. A corporation increases its profits by, say, $2 billion and, when finally found guilty after years of legal proceedings, is fined $1 million or so. The most surprising thing about this sequence of events is that the verdict so rarely elicits hearty laughter in court.
Lawsuits are even more uncertain, as they require social cooperation and the raising of large amounts of money. Even then, as the tobacco vendors and Monsanto/Bayer have demonstrated for years, the issue will be uncertain.
Senior corporate executives are not in the least concerned with morality or the law, unless they believe there is a serious likelihood of them personally being sent to prison. Game theory almost always dictates going ahead to make profits, and worrying about any possible consequences later (if at all).
Lastly, corporations do not normally look much more than one or two quarters ahead. They can't afford to, because the top executives are measured on quarterly results. By the time the vultures come home to roost, they plan to be long gone to even better-paid jobs elsewhere, or - who knows - in government. Maybe regulating industry?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.