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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."
They want to create Superbugs.
You want antibiotic resistant citrus greening? This is how you get antibiotic resistant citrus greening.
The rise of super bugs is an issue for everyone.
Why so polite? I would have started that summary with something much more direct and to the point, like: The brainless muppet that senile old lecher Donald Trump put in charge of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of allowing Florida to completely ruin two common anti-biotics and create yet more antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains ...
Even more antibiotic-resistant bacteria, just one of the wonderful things that happen when you make one of the most corrupt morons on earth your president,
Drinking florida orange juice will also treat syphilis now...
This SOUNDS bad to me, uninformed on the topic as I am.
I wonder what else can be done to stop this multi-year outbreak.
"All the problems to be found in an orchard are caused by our concept of an orchard." Observation vs Concept http://bit.ly/1lM3PFS
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
I think they should go after the psyllid flies which transmit the disease. Psyllid are highly host-specific and usually only feed on a single kind of plant.
Perhaps they could do something like they did when Florida got rid of the screwworm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia), or perhaps a genetic engineered fly like the projects to eliminate the mosquito.
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.
And what's to stop this from getting into the water table? End up coming out of your taps? Nothing. This is madness.
... beuracracy ... speed up Humanities Denise
Spooling otters co-rectal by Andriod otto core wrecked.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Two more common and very important antibiotics about to be rendered useless. Fucking idiot morons. How are they allowed to do this?
Works really good ... until it doesn't.
If enough antibiotics are used to kill the vast majority of the bacteria, the antibiotic spray is collected, instead of lingering in the environment, and replacement, friendly bacteria were put in their place, it could work.
Scientists can always develop new antibiotics.
You say that as if developing an anti-biotic is akin to developing a new smartphone generation, something you do routinely ever couple of years. It isn't, developing antibiotics is really hard and immensely expensive. The more of antibiotics are rendered useless by stupid and useless stunts like this the harder it gets to develop new ones. And it's not just antibiotics, my local hospital is currently dealing with an outbreak of bacteria that have become immune to not just normal hand disinfectants but also the heavy duty stuff they use to disinfect the operating theatres and this is mainly due to excessive and careless use of these disinfectants.
Humans and other species which can be infected by bacteria?
The orchards and run-off from them don't exist in alternate universe,
the large scale exposure of antibiotics can trigger MSRA strains
which can infect people who never touch a Florida orange in their life.
High probability of abuse. They should require a doctor to prescribe the drug for each individual (human, animal, or plant), only after physically examining that individual.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yeah, but they actually want to kill the bacteria, not just feel like they are killing the bacteria.
The main problem with antibiotics isn't that we can't make new ones. It's still very hard to create new ones and see them through all the trials. The real problem is that the drug companies don't want to spend the money to do so because there isn't the money in it. Any new antibiotics are going to be used so sparingly that there won't be profits in them even when they will cost a fortune to use.
Even if they came up with an everyday antibiotic most people would take it for a week or two and then stop it. And if they managed to capture all of the common antibiotic use it would seem to be a huge market but people have to stop taking it for cases that are unnecessary. The real market for everyday antibiotic use is under 10% of the current usage.
I got that from a program from the UK I saw in which an infectious disease specialist went into an ordinary practice (office with multiple family doctors) and tried to get people to stop taking antibiotics when they weren't needed. If they insisted even after he spent the extra time explaining why they didn't need them he gave them a prescription. On his first day he managed to get a couple people out of around 30 to change their mind. He had much better luck when he brought in a machine to determine if the cause of the patients condition was a virus or bacteria. But the test took time and money that the practice wouldn't get reimbursed for.
Even now when people are demanding antibiotics unnecessarily the big Pharma companies don't see financial sense for bringing through new antibiotics that university researchers are finding, and they are finding them. I can't see how the companies will ever want to make antibiotics if society can get the message across to only take antibiotics when you absolutely need to. Governments are going to have to get together and create a fund to make sure that we have antibiotics in the future.
I live in Florida. Citrus isn't even native here. This is a losing battle and we've sunk far too much money trying to save it. Let's find creative ways to use the land. Free range animal farms. Homes. Amusement parks. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and move on.
Right now, China is the world’s largest consumer of agricultural antibiotics, out-dosing even the US by eight tonnes to every one. A 2013 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that 162,000 tons of antibiotics are consumed in China each year, with 52% going to animal husbandry. In the US, 70% of antibiotics amounting to 10,000 tons are consumed by livestock each year.
As that shows, China is using around 80,000 TONS of antibiotics for humans and another 82,000 TONS for animals.
OTOH, America uses around 14,000 tons of antibiotics, of which around 10,000 tons is used on farms. America uses 1/8 of the anti-biotics on Ag that China uses, even though we grow slightly just less than China does (America exports a lot of Ag). And when it comes to human use, we are doing 5% of what China uses, even though America is 20% of the population size of China.
So, here is another lie racked up by Caffeinated Bacon(Crimson Tsunami).
When do you stop?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Doesn't seem that way. It's caused by a bacteria, transmitted by insects.
Not today, but the and of antibiotics is in sight. Anybody hastening it is effectively a mass-murderer. How can people be this stupid? Oh, right, climate-change deniers, flat-earthers, Trump-fans, ...
The human race as a whole does not deserve to survive. Too dumb.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Anything to make a quick buck. No matter whom you kill in the slightly longer run.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This boils down to about .15kg (less than a third of a pound for us yanks) per lot.
For drugs typically employed in milligram quantities, this is a hell of a lot. And spreading it out doesn't make things better, it makes the potential resistance issues WORSE.
It is crazy. We have serious issues with AMRs. Nearly all of the current antibiotics were developed by the gov and reagan and now trump cut the funding on the R&D. If we are going to be using up our antibiotics on Ag, then we had better make sure to really push vaccines. Otherwise, I expect a lot of deaths in the near future.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
While your right that it wouldn't treat infected fruit, I wonder if something like this might affect the flies that carry the bacteria?
Basically it seems to me they are treating the symptom (green oranges) when they should be trying to eliminate the vector. Something benign environmentally, that repels the vector would be a better solution IF such exists.
At least it sounds better to my 'uneducated in this fields' ears....(:
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Embracing the industry is one thing. Running it to an extreme is foolish. The fact that you took 1 sentence out of context shows what a lying POS you are.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's scary. Are they replacing doorknobs and handles with copper-plated versions? Placing vinegar-based hand and foot wash stations around the place?
And yes, I'm serious.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
One of the worst things you can do is to just too little of such things. It means it's not enough to kill the bacteria, just enough for it to live through it and form immunity to it.
You either use it to kill this generation, knowing the next generation will be less in number but probably immune, or you use it en-masse *with other antibiotics* so that nothing can evolve to survive against all of them quickly enough.
Spraying huge amounts (and that is a huge amount - way more than enough to contaminate your entire house and cause you health problems, for instance - generally antibiotics are measured in mg, not cc) of a single antibiotic at a time is basically the best way ever to render it useless permanently worldwide in as short a time as possible.
It's not huge quantities, no, but it doesn't need to be... it works on the microscopic scale where dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of it onto actively harvested crops is stupid. There's literally enough antibiotics left in our urine after sewage treatment to affect the ocean life, what the hell do you think dumping thousands of tons of it into just open nature is going to do?
P.S. About 8m kilos of antimicrobials, including antibotiocs, active ingredient a year is used on US livestock. (Source: 2017 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals). This one idea alone accounts for 5.5% of that use across the entire nation.
That number recently dropped in 2017 to under 5.5m,. Guess why. Because the FDA are supposed to be trying to combat antibiotic resistance.
https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVete...
This is so stupid that it reminds me of what Florida did in the '70s to all their ornimental palm trees. When a virus was threatening all the beautiful palm trees, somebody got the bright idea to innoculate all the trees with antibiotics. The problem was (1) that antibiotics don't kill viruses, and (2) they didn't even know enough to use a new needle for each tree. They by this monumental act of stupidity, they physically transferred the virus from all infected trees to all the healthy trees. Surprise surprise, just about all the decorative palm trees died.
This prank is just as stupid. By working against the gradient of Evolution they will in effect be teaching ALL bacterium species in that environment, how to become resistant to it. Noting good will come out of this, and they have everything to loose in the process of being so stupid.
The correct way to do this is to use a cocktail of phages that attack the specific bacterium, and thus be working WITH Evolution to solve the problem. A phage can target and kill the specific bacterium in exactly the same way that they killed all the palm trees years ago. The phages will adapt to any new defences that the bacterium creates by any new genomic mechanisms. By having multiple phages in play, the bacterium will be overwhelmed by new and well-adapted phages, and the disease will lessen to the point where it no longer poses a financial threat to the orange groves that they are trying to protect. Work with Evolution, not against it!!
1/2 cup of antibiotics for a typical suburban lawn? I have put less than that amount of dry plant food into water sprayed onto a lawn. I'm unsure if you are joking but your numbers do not give me any confidence in this.
Then, they turn around and let any farmer with 50 acres of chickens, pigs or now TREES just spray thousands of gallons even more powerful antibiotics with impunity???
Guys, This. Has. To. Stop.