Objections Over Antibiotic Approved for Use in Cattle 253
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:3, Insightful)
the beef industry is throwing our safety out the window for immediate profits.
of course when people start keeling over from madcow the panic is going to be so fierce that people will stop eating beef altogether.
Level? What level? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:OK Dems, the ball is in your court . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
It's cute that you think there's a significant difference between the two parties.
"guidance document" (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
This administration will kill everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just don't eat meat (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just don't eat meat (Score:5, Insightful)
Antibiotics should be banned for agricultural uses. It's putting all of us at risk so that a few can make a bigger profit.
Idiots. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
The Big One (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Micotil (Score:5, Insightful)
Density. When you cram that many of the same species into one space, you have rather less of a herd and more of a bacterial growth medium, not unlike a petri dish. Suppressing natural immune responses through minimal culling and artificial antibiotics exacerbates the problem. And once you have really virulent infections going around, they contaminate the environment, so any livestock that merely pass through will pick it up. They can't even decontaminate hospitals completely -- you think a feedlot gets disinfected as much?
Not to be rude, but how on earth can a rancher not know this sort of thing?
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:3, Insightful)
Damaging the effectiveness of an important antibiotic in order to make some cattle a little bit bigger is a perfection reflection on the Bush ideology of governance. We are all paying for his mistakes, not least of which the hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled into private contractor's pockets to occupy the formerly sovereign country of Iraq.
Avoiding the word "Evolution" again (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ironic that in light of the recent analysis [slashdot.org] 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.
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market fails in the face of uncompensated externalities.
"A few million lives" for "megabucks" won't produce a strong economy anyway. In an economic analysis, you *can* put a price on human lives - but that price is well over the couple hundred bucks each this statement implies at maximum.
"Industrial" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:OK Dems, the ball is in your court . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:OK Dems, the ball is in your court . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:2, Insightful)
This is criminal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Big One (Score:3, Insightful)
so im a lame ass human development major (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
With better animal-husbandry (don't feed a grazing animal expecting a high-fiber diet acidic corn and make it stand in one place all day), you'll get healthier animals, and less need for antibiotics and other promoters to make them grow. And before anyone starts the accusations, I eat meat and look askance at soybean-based alleged food products. These are the same people pushing irradiation of food so that they don't have to slow down slaughterhouses and worry about what bits of cattle-waste end up on or in meat. Sometimes the answer really is, "it's not a machine, and we should not be producing beef as if it was Nikes, so worry about public health first, then about m
Re:Time to go organic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Feared?" (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent Reason to Oppose Tort Reform (Score:4, Insightful)
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!"
30% becomes far more (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:Excellent Reason to Oppose Tort Reform (Score:3, Insightful)
I say this without ill nor trollish intentions: You, sir, are an idiot. Allowing the use of Cefquinome in industrial cattle production creates bacteria highly resistant to the antibiotic. By the time someone dies due to these circumstances, the problem is already out of control. So, not only would we keep the problems with present tort law, but we add to it the problem of the newly evolved superbug.
Or, possibly, you were being facetious...
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Very scary (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they're saying the current health of certain bank accounts and stock portfolios outweighs the health of people.