{"id":24352,"date":"2013-04-07T22:12:25","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T03:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drishtikone.com\/?p=24352"},"modified":"2013-04-07T22:12:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T03:12:25","slug":"antibiotics-in-us-meat-production-is-breeding-superbugs-and-deadly-infections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/drishtikone\/2013\/04\/antibiotics-in-us-meat-production-is-breeding-superbugs-and-deadly-infections\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of Antibiotics in US meat production is breeding “Superbugs” and deadly infections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The use of anti-biotics in the meat production and the farms in general is at a point, where one US House Representative says is like pouring chemicals into kids\u2019 Cheerios.\u00a0 This discussion is absolutely scary!!!\u00a0 I am surprised no one is even talking about it in the US the way it should be talked about.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows the basic issue with antibiotics. Overuse them, or casually use them, and you undercut the miraculous effectiveness of one of the most important classes of drugs humans have ever found.<\/p>\n

Now here\u2019s a shocker: today, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are sold for animals. For livestock. For feed. The meat we eat is overwhelmingly produced in a factory farm system that floats on massive use of antibiotics. Now farms are producing the antibiotic-resistant superbugs that kill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is the discussion \u2013 You have got to listen to the guy \u2013 the one who owns a Farm (27.00 to 28.07), which breeds grass-fed animals and he says very clearly that farmers themselves are dying of these chemicals and infections!<\/p>\n

The guests in this discussion are:<\/p>\n

Rep. Louise Slaughter<\/strong><\/a>, Democratic U.S. Representative for New York\u2019s 25th district. (@louiseslaughter<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Listen to Rep. Slaughter\u2019s segment of the interview\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mike Apley<\/strong><\/a>, veterinarian and researcher at Kansas State University.<\/p>\n

Lance Price<\/strong><\/a>, professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University.<\/p>\n

Stephen McDonnell<\/strong>, founder and CEO of\u00a0Applegate<\/a>, a producer of organic and natural meats.\u00a0(@applegateceo<\/a>)<\/p>\n

REFERENCES<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0\u201cScientists at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they\u2019re telling us it\u2019s getting worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wired<\/a>\u00a0\u201cIt is difficult to imagine a study design that could trace specific animals, their meat, and their eaters in a large group of free-living humans; and unless you have volunteers, as Levy did, the study would push ethical boundaries as well. But having that lack of definition in the middle of the animal-to-human bacterial flow permits uncertainty \u2014 which proponents of continued ag antibiotic use exploit.\u00a0A new study\u00a0of Danish farmers and their livestock may have ended that uncertainty. It is still retrospective, but its observations \u2014 using whole-genome sequencing \u2014 are so fine-grained that their tracing of the bacterial traffic seems to me to be difficult to challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMBO Molecular Medicine<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWe investigated the molecular epidemiology of these livestock-associated\u00a0mecC<\/em>-MRSA cases using WGS. Phylogenetic analysis across the entire core genome revealed that the isolates from these cases form two distinct, farm-specific clusters comprising near identical isolates from the human case and from livestock on that farm. Within each cluster, the human and animal isolates only differed by a small number of SNPs, which supports the premise of zoonotic transmission. In-depth genome analysis identified a number of candidate genes and mutations that may be associated with host\u2013pathogen interactions and virulence of this emerging MRSA clone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Related articles from External Sources<\/h6>\n