Grist: The FDA finally reveals how many antibiotics factory farms use - and it’s a shitload

[marmar]

The FDA finally reveals how many antibiotics factory farms use - and it’s a shitload
by Tom Philpott

10 Dec 2010 1:48 PM


Animals in factory farms get daily doses of antibiotics, both to keep them alive in their stressful, unsanitary conditions and to make them grow faster. What's the annual volume of antibiotic use on factory farms? The question is a critical one, because the practice has given rise to a novel strain of antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), known as ST398, that's widely present in our vast hog and chicken factories.

Well, federal regulators have for years ignored the question and refused to release estimates of just how much antibiotics the livestock industry burns through. But that ended yesterday, when the FDA released its first-ever report on the topic. The answer: 29 million pounds in 2009. According to ace public-health reporter Maryn McKenna, that's a shitload. (I'm paraphrasing her.)

McKenna, author of the important book Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA and once a guest on my podcast show, puts it into context on her blog. She says that in lieu of official accounting of antiobitic use in industrial agriculture, NGOs have tried to fill the void. In 2000, she reports, the Animal Health Institute, a veterinary-drug trade group, estimated total use in livestock at 17.8 million pounds. The industry has been clinging to that number ever since.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which campaigns against industrial agriculture, put the figure at 24.6 million pounds in a 2001 study. But the UCS figure focused only on "non-therapeutic purposes" -- i.e., in McKenna's words, applications not designed to treat specific illnesses but rather to "make animals grow to market weight faster and to prevent them catching diseases in the close quarters of confinement agriculture." UCS figured the industry used another several million pounds for legit purposes of treating sick animals. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-fda-reveals-amount-of-antibiotic-use-on-factory-farms

[gateley]

1. K&R! nt

[Bigmack]

2. US food is laced with so many drugs...

that our sewers are petrie dishes for the bugs that kill us.

[upi402]

3. and our aquifers

I suspect there is something we don't know of yet - that is making us ill and obese.

I mean beyond sugar, corn syrup, transfats, et al

[Bigmack]

5. Estrogen and estrogen-like compounds like BPA. nt

[Lucian]

4. I'm surprised I'm not walking around with 36 D breasts right now...

with the amount of hormones found in meat.