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."
Funds (Score:3, Interesting)
A simple 'The citizens of the US our are primary concern. If it is not appropriatly tested to our satisfaction, it won't be ok'd.'
Tnhen they can use great lines like:
"You are condernced for the people of this country, right Senator?"
Time to spin it back.
Micotil (Score:5, Interesting)
i call bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
how likely do you think it is that the FDA simply cannot get enough fundage to make sure our food is safe? that excuse was provided to keep people focusing on the actual problem.
im sure alot of people will read this and think 'eh, so what' but it is in fact one of the biggest issues of our lifetimes.
monsanto has been selling posilac (rBGH) for a long time now, and whats particularly fucked up about this is that posilac is made for one reason- so that each cow produces more milk. why is that so fucked up? because we are, and have been, for a long time, over producing milk. there are MANY companies that pay dairy farmers to produce LESS milk or none at all. so one of the first new products monsanto gives us (since agent orange) is a drug that produces more of what we do not need.
rBGH causes something called mastitis in cows which is a inflammation of the udders, when this happens the farmer has to start injecting mass amounts of antibiotics to try to keep it under control.
it is PROVEN (and swept under the carpet) science that we HAVE ALREADY created antibiotic resistant bacteria because of the mass amounts of antibiotics the cows are drugged with. its been known for a long long time now.
monsanto is a very dangerous company and many people would call me a nutjob for saying so, but you need only look at the facts surrounding how they got this shit approved in the first place to tell that it doesnt pass the smell test.
when they were trying to get this approved by the FDA they had a researcher named Margaret Miller to put together a report to submit to the FDA concerning the safety of monsanto's growth hormones.
right before the report was submitted to the FDA Margaret left monsanto and was hired by the FDA. guess what her first job was for the FDA? to approve the report she herself had just written.
congrats, capitalism.
UK Policy (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK we dont immunise animals that are going to end up down the food chain to prevent antibodies from passing down the food chain. And ofcorse to prevent resistant strains of the desieses from forming.
This is why at the last foot and mouth outbreak we (UK) killed off all the infected stock. France etc treated their animals.
Can't teach an old cow new tricks (Score:5, Interesting)
"The sale of Posilac is illegal in virtually every developed country with the exception of the United States. Recent studies have shown that lab rats absorbed IGF-1 during the digestive process, which subsequently caused cysts and other cancerous growths to form in the test animals flesh. Despite numerous official requests for the FDA to revoke the approval for Monsanto's product, no such action has been taken thus far."
Don't try [youtube.com] and tell people though.
As for FDA, I can't even begin to tell you how [newstarget.com] badly [newstarget.com] it's managed. Thankfully they thought about a perfect side dish to our Dolly steaks [slashdot.org]. Maybe we shouldn't wonder why health care costs are skyrocketing and people are getting fatter...
Re:Micotil (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I prefer beef that is ranged. I would be nice to not use anti-biotics, but I consider that inhumane.
Re:Micotil (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Feared?" (Score:5, Interesting)
If I had to choose between a gram negative and gram positive infection, I'd choose the gram negative.
I'm a physician and my friend who is an infectious disease doc happened to be next to me when I read your comment. We both aggreed, this comment is just plain wrong. I'm not sure where to start. Its wrong on many levels mostly because its just too simplistic. My time is limited unfortunatly, so I'm going to be brief. Gram negative infections are common and they can be serious, especially if they make there way into the blood. There are a number of highly resistant gram negative bacteria that are incredably difficult to treat as they are pan-resistant in some cases to every antibiotic avaiable so combinations have to be used for any effectiveness. It is not uncommon to do synergy studies for gram negative bacteria so that we can find combinations of antibiotics that will work because one will not. I personally have never heard of (nor has my friend) needing synergy studies in a gram positives bacteria - please correct me if we are wrong. Every gram positive I've treated or heard of has been at least susceptible to one antibiotic, either vanc or linezolid, usually both. Of course, gram positive infections can be very serious, but so are gram negative infections. I'm not sure at all where you are coming from in your statement. I apologize for the brevity...I wish I had more time.
Re:Micotil (Score:2, Interesting)
Time to go organic (Score:4, Interesting)
While I agree that the motive is profit, I don't really understand why the industry is moving that way. Organic Beef is $14 per pound vs $6 per pound for the chemistry set beef. Surely there is just as much profit to be made with improved quality, vs cheaper production.
Re:"Feared?" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a GP - so I won't argue with an infectologist. I'm also in the 3rd world. We barely have access to vanco in our (poor) public healthcare system - much less linezolid and the other new anti-staph drugs. If you have access to linezolid - great, I agree with you.
For us if we run into MRSA that patient is pretty much screwed, whereas with a gram negative - despite having to use two or more drugs like genta/clinda, we can usually do something for the patient. I'm by no means an infectologist however
Re:Micotil (Score:5, Interesting)
the problems come in trying to market the meat independently. It is really hard. If you try to go through a store they tack on a minimum of 30% which forces me to sell it for market price. (how many people go into a store and are willing to pay more for there food) and if I sell it independently there are a whole other set of problems (to much to get into) so basically i can't sell it for more at this time. I do believe though that there is a growing market for antibiotic free meat.
Re:This goes beyond idiocy (Score:3, Interesting)
Bacteria do not develop resistance. The resistance is already there in a few - they survive and the population that expands from them carries the resistance forth.
This, however, is cyclical. It is usualy the case that whatever makes them immune to one attack, makes them vunerable to another. Someone down the page is whinning that the drugs that were effective 2 or 3 years ago for his cattle now require 3 times the doseage to be effective.
If he'll reach farther back, he will probably find another drug from 10 years ago that completely lost its effectiveness. If that drug were brought out, it would probably kick ass again.
I have family members that are nurses and people doctors, my wife is a Vet, I work in the poulty industry where we use drugs on the birds and pesticides to kill bugs. In all of these settings we have observed the exact same senerio.
the problem is the big guys - hospitals and the like - always want to keep these "last line of defence" drugs around. A much better solution is like what you do for killing bugs or rats - use a rotation of drugs.
Re:Micotil (Score:2, Interesting)
Point being that customers, when informed, seem to know what's good for them suggesting the market may be working in favour of the independent farmer (at least in the UK!)
Re:"Feared?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course we have a large number of patients who frequently get gram positive infections because of chronic indwelling central cathaters - usually the dialysis patients (Gram postive infections in the US are becoming much more common actually because our dialysis population is exploding with all the diabetes, obesity and hypertension.) I can't imagine how you can manage without linezolid or vanc for in hospital types of patients. Isn't vanc generic by now? Obviously, linezolid is ungodly expensive. I would have thought vanc would be as accessable as any other IV medication. Is your MRSA not bactrim, clinda or floroquinolone sensitive. At least where I live, our MRSA is almost universally sensitive to Clinda and Bactrim and often to flouros.
Re:Micotil (Score:3, Interesting)
What's In Your Milk?: An Exposé of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking [trafford.com]
Re:"Feared?" (Score:3, Interesting)
It has been shown repeatedly that if you take away the antibiotic from the environment the resistance does not get passed on as it is no longer useful. After one generation with zero exposure to the antibiotic they will not pass on the necessary genes. It's a simple concept. The problem is that you could stop using an antibiotic today but it will take quite some time before it will be removed from the surrounding environment so the bacteria will remain resistant until the environment is cleansed. This is why I suggest an interval of a year or perhaps even longer.
Of course I alluded to the bigger issue of using any antibiotics at all for your food which is the real problem, bacterial resistance is remarkably easy to manage.
Re:Time to go organic (Score:3, Interesting)
The cattle is not the issue here, and consuming organic or non-organic has no implication on the issue at hand, unless the mass-producing market were to be utterly boycotted by consumers and had their powerful lobby defanged, which is a lala-land statistical impossibility scenario.
The issue at hand is you or me dying of flu in 10 years, because we idly chucked the last antibiotics that still work against resistant bacteria all over the foodchain, resulting in mutated strains of bacteria that are resistant even to these drugs. When those will infects humans, the humans will die.
This is why you are told not to take antibiotics without due reason, and to always take everything you've been given (so as to clobber all the bacteria you've got and not have some unkilled 5% bacterium survivors in your system that proved more resistant to the antibiotics you took than the rest, contributing to a move to AB-resistant bacteria).
Scientists have been screaming their heads off about this for decades now. If only anyone would listen.