Peek-a-book

All Medicine Is Energy Medicine by William Conder, D.C.

Resist it, it persists

At a news conference in October 2010, FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, citing the "distressingly low" number of new antibiotics in development, proposed providing a "financial incentive" to drug companies to increase their research and development of such substances. She said that this action is important and necessary in view of the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant strains of "superbugs" that have evolved from harmless, as well as infectious, strains of bacteria.

In other words, Dr. Hamburg of the FDA wants to pay, or otherwise financially compensate, the wealthiest (and arguably the most ethically-challenged) companies in the world to invent more antibiotic drugs to kill bacteria that have evolved into drug-resistant "superbugs" due to abuse of the drugs these companies have made already to kill less deadly "bugs". Apparently, when Dr. Hamburg's political appointment expires, she will be looking for a really good-paying job in the pharmaceutical industry.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified antibiotic resistance as "one of the world's most pressing health problems". The World Health Organization says that the main causes of the emergence of the resistant bacteria are the overuse of antibiotics in feed animals for non-therapeutic reasons and indiscriminant prescribing of these drugs by doctors.

So, let's have more antibiotics?

It is common practice on large factory farms to add antibiotics to livestock's feed to promote growth and protect against infection. The prophylactic use is necessary due to changes in the bacterial species in the digestive tract of livestock fed mostly grains instead of grasses, and to control mastitis, udder inflammation.

In June 2010, the FDA issued a recommendation to farmers to abandon the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics. The problem was identified, however, as early as 1969 in the UK by a group whose "Swann Report" stated:

It is clear that there has been a dramatic increase over the years in the numbers of strains of enteric bacteria of animal origin which show resistance to one or more antibiotics. This resistance has resulted from the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and other purposes in farm livestock.

Why did FDA drag its feet for 40 years? A reason may be found in this example: recall that Margaret Miller, Deputy Director of New Animal Drugs at FDA in the early '90's, approved a report from Monsanto attesting to the safety of Monsanto's growth hormone for cows, rBGH. (rBGH, by the way, is known to increase the incidence of mastitis in milk cows.) Later, Miller approved increasing by 100 times the legal limit of antibiotics that could be given to cows. And, by the way, the aforementioned report verifying the safety of rBGH was written by Miller, herself, when she was a researcher at Monsanto, before she worked at FDA.

The following is a summary of legislation that has been proposed in congress every year (with minor additions) since 2003. It hasn't passed yet.

Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2003 - Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for a phased elimination of the nontherapeutic use in food-producing animals of critical antimicrobial animal drugs. Defines "critical antimicrobial animal drug" and "nontherapeutic use." Requires manufacturers of a critical antimicrobial animal drug or an animal feed for food-producing animals containing such a drug to report annual sales information.

In addition to 55 congressional supporters, a 2003 report by the "Keep Antibiotics Working"" campaign listed over 300 endorsements for "The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2003" including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, dozens of health and consumer groups, animal protection organizations, religious groups, and sustainable farming and agriculture organizations. The American Farm Bureau was conspicuous in its absence from that list.

See the list here http://www.acpm.org/2003051H.pdf

The Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health's website lists the following about antibiotic resistant micro-organisms:

Quick Facts

•Increasing use of antimicrobials in humans, animals, and agriculture has resulted in many microbes developing resistance to these powerful drugs.
•Many infectious diseases are increasingly difficult to treat because of antimicrobial-resistant organisms, including HIV infection, staphylococcal infection, tuberculosis, influenza, gonorrhea, candida infection, and malaria.
•Between 5 and 10 percent of all hospital patients develop an infection, leading to an increase of about $5 billion in annual U.S. healthcare costs.
•About 90,000 of these patients die each year as a result of their infection, up from 13,300 patient deaths in 1992.
•People infected with antimicrobial-resistant organisms are more likely to have longer hospital stays and may require more complicated treatment.

Ninety thousand hospital patients die each year from superbug infections developed while in the hospital, compared to 13,300 in 1992. Remember, Monsanto researcher Margaret Miller, at FDA, approved increasing the legal limit of antibiotic use in cows by 100 times in the early 1990's.

Robert Cohen, who petitioned FDA to reconsider its approval of rBGH, wrote in May 2000:

The consequences of her [Margaret Miller]  action were that new strains of bacteria developed in dairy cows that were immune to existing antibiotics, which no longer worked when they were needed. People drank milk containing increased amounts of antibiotics and new species of bacteria with immunities to those antimicrobials.

On its website, Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Application of Science and Technology follows-up Cohen's article with this comment:

Leading experts have emphasized that powerful measures are required to reduce the use of antibiotics. There are clear evidence linking antibiotics resistance in salmonella and other bacteria to the use of antibiotics in farm animals. In a situation, feared to cause the resurgence of intractable lethal infectious diseases, an FDA official, Margret Miller, has acted so as to further increase the risk of the emergence of dangerous bacteria all over the USA by allowing a considerable increase of antibiotics use on cows. The only obvious reason for such a decision appears to have been to promote the use of rBGH.

If we connect all the dots....we find that industrialized farming practices....which have persisted for several generations in spite of evidence indicating it's harmfulness to humans and farm animals....(because of  short-sighted objectives and intentional ignorance with regard to environmental considerations on the part of proponents of these practices)....have caused the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria....which find their way into food....and wind up in the bodies of people....causing illness and death.

What is referred to here by the phrase "industrialized farming practices" includes: administering recombinant bovine growth hormone to cows to make them produce more milk than their bodies want to; giving feed animals antibiotics to fatten them and to combat infection caused as unwanted side-effects of rBGH; grain feeding instead of grass grazing; fertilizing vegetable crops with manure from cows that harbor antibiotic resistant bacteria having emerged due to their being subjected to abuse of antibiotics.

Presently, controversial Senate Bill 510 is being considered by our lawmakers. The bill would grant FDA considerable power to regulate the production and processing of food. With Monsanto operative, lobbyist, and lawyer Michael Taylor acting as "food safety expert" within FDA at this time, one can imagine in whose favor FDA food safety policy will be placed. Meanwhile, the bill to control use of antibiotics in feed animals, first proposed in 2003 and well-supported throughout the health community, can't get out of committee.

Senate Bill 510, if passed into law, would jeopardize small farms' ability to sell directly to consumers. A paragraph added to the bill in the interest of protecting small farmers from the burden of federal regulations  was received with protest from big agriculture lobbyists. Following is an excerpt from their letter to Senators Reid, Harkin, McConnell, and Enzi concerning the amendment proposed by Montana Senator Tester:

...we are writing to express our opposition to latest “compromise” on Senator Tester’s amendment to exempt small farms and business operations from basic federal food safety requirements.

Comments from Senator Tester and supporters are now making it abundantly clear that their cause is not to argue that small farms pose less risk, but to wage an ideological war against the vast majority of American farmers that seeks to feed 300 million Americans. We are appalled at statements by Senator Tester reported today in the Capital Press that “Small producers are not raising a commodity, but are raising food. Industrial agriculture, he said, takes the people out of the equation."

The undersigned produce organizations strongly oppose inclusion of the Tester amendment in S. 510. If this language is included in the bill, we will be forced to oppose final passage of the bill.

The "undersigned" is a list of groups represented by The Produce Marketers Association and United Fresh Produce Association. Regarding the latter, its board of directors lists representatives from Dole, Kroger, McDonalds, Dupont, and Bayer, among others. (Noteworthy in this letter is the use of the phrase "wage an ideological war": where do these small farmers get off bucking the system by wanting to control their own farming methods and by selling directly to consumers?! The nerve!)

To reiterate, the primary causes of the evolution of antibiotic resistant superbug microorganisms, according to researchers and public health officials, are 1) the over-use and abuse of antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes in food animals, and 2) over-use and abuse of antibiotics, for health problems not affected by antibiotics, in humans. And it is widely acknowledged that the "food contamination problem" is inherent in industrialized food production.

When used appropriately, antibiotics are very important drugs and can save lives. In any case, however, they cause unwanted side-effects in the human body. Still, these side-effects are considered a fair and necessary trade-off for stopping a dangerous bacterial infection.

An analogous situation has emerged in agriculture: "superweeds" resistant to conventional herbicides, especially Monsanto's glyphosphate Roundup, are appearing as another sign that Nature is pushing back.

A December 2008 report in "The Delta Farm Press" exposed the following:

The epicenter of glyphosate-resistant Palmer pigweed is Macon County, Ga. That site is now 70 percent to 80 percent resistant and over 10,000 acres were abandoned in 2007.

Palmer amaranth is suspected to be resistant on 300,000 acres in 20 counties in Georgia; 130,000 acres in nine counties in South Carolina; 200,000 acres in 22 counties in North Carolina.

The same online newsletter posted the following article on November 2010:

Are we running out of herbicides? The answer, I believe, is yes — for three reasons.

The first is the continued development of herbicide-resistant weeds. We have no less than seven glyphosate-resistant weeds in the Mid-South now. They include giant ragweed, common ragweed, johnsongrass, Italian ryegrass, Palmer amaranth and common waterhemp.

Many folks tend to forget that in the early 1990s, we were beginning to have major issues with herbicide resistance with these same weeds. Roundup Ready crops came on in the mid- to late-1990s and bailed us out of that mess.

...out of the frying-pan "mess" into the fire "mess".... The Roundup Ready bail-out was temporary. (The other 2 reasons indicated by the article's author had to do with pressure from environmental groups and diminished development of herbicides from chemical companies.)

And now we need more herbicides?

"Roundup Ready" is Monsanto's name for its genetically engineered crop seeds modified to resist its glyphosphate herbicide, "Roundup". The idea is that if farmers plant Roundup Ready seeds they can spray their fields with the herbicide Roundup and not worry that the herbicide will kill Roundup Ready plants - it kills only the nasty, unwanted weeds.

Monsanto's response to the emergence of superweeds to farmers, as early as 1997, was to recommend more glyphosphate, more Roundup Ready seeds, and avoid crop rotation using traditional crops and methods. Meanwhile it worked internally to maintain its position: by 2001 Monsanto obtained a patent on mixtures of its glyphosphate and other herbicides to target resistant weeds.

From Iowa State University's Department of Agronomy in May 2003, the following summarizes what weed scientists knew, and about which Monsanto lied:

Almost all weed scientists agree that the evolution of resistant biotypes is inevitable with the current use pattern of glyphosate. Increased adoption of rotations relying solely on RR crops will greatly enhance the rate that resistance evolves. Because of this, we feel it is best to develop long-term weed management plans that reduce the selection pressure placed on weeds by any single herbicide, including Roundup.

An October 2010 report published on the website of the Organic Consumers Association says:

Environmental scientists warned even before Monsanto's "herbicide tolerant" GMO crops were approved that they would hasten the evolution of resistant weeds. For these scientists, the issue was obvious: introduction of high doses of a single chemical year after year would result in the exact conditions needed to breed resistance: weeds with resistance genes would be the only weeds that could survive and breed, leading to superweeds that are unaffected even by massive herbicide spraying.

As the industrial model of farming and the industrial model of conventional medical practice fail, the people suffer the fallout. The solution that arises from within these industries is to "just keep doing more of the same". With  minds set this way, breakthrough is not likely. And, unfortunately, the  "...government by the people, for the people..." has become "...the government by the corporations, for the corporations..."

Intentional ignoring of adequate warning because commerce was the priority, a blind faith in the infallibility of the technology, and silly human error caused the unsinkable Titanic to sink, too.

A definition of insanity, attributed by different sources to the likes of Gandhi or Einstein or Twain or Socrates, goes something like "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results". A variation of this is the observation that "you can't solve a problem using the same logic that created the problem in the first place".

Obesity is recognized as a predisposing factor in heart disease, type II diabetes, and cancer - the top three health problems in America. Farmers know that feeding antibiotics and grains to livestock fattens them quickly and shortens their lives. Choose your doctor and your food carefully. And, if at all possible, stay out of the hospital.

December1, 2010

Pasteurized Milk, or, "Hey, Dude, Where's My Cow?"

In May 2010, saying that he "...must side with the interests of public health and the dairy industry..." Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle vetoed a bill that would have allowed the sale of raw milk under specific conditions for a year and a half. Many observers thought the bill, already passed in the Wisconsin legislature by a wide margin, would be signed by Doyle.

In other words, according to what Doyle himself said, he caved-in to the lobbying of special interests: "... side with interests of public health and the dairy industry..." He probably was not aware of what it was to which he was admitting, which makes the problem even worse.

"Public health" doesn't refer to the health of each individual of "the public", whatever that is. It refers to the officiants of government agencies whose opinions of what should and should not be done is dictated by corporate entities that have a special interest in outcomes.

Even though there is enough support from the people in Wisconsin for the "legalization" of raw milk, even though there is enough support from the group of elected state representatives for the "legalization" of raw milk, even though raw milk is "legal" in other states including Illinois and Minnesota, even though (in recent history) pasteurized milk caused more serious illness than raw milk, Doyle vetoed the bill under the lobbying influence of apparently powerful non-governmental agencies.

Statistically, raw spinach and canteloupe are more dangerous than raw milk. Recently, the Departmment of Agriculture announced another "ground beef" recall due to E. coli 0157:H7 contamination, this time 1,000,000 pounds of the mystery meat. The mid-sized Modesto, California, meat processing company in question says it takes food safety very seriously and, of course, it must. But with so many hands in this kind of operation, contamination is inevitable.

Approving of the governor's veto, the President of the Wisconsin Medical Society issued a statement on May 19, 2010 saying, in part, that "...the governor acted on behalf of sound science and in defense of children who may not understand the hazards of a glass of raw milk..."

It's no secret that people can be controlled with fear.

One would ask, "To what 'sound science' does the Wisconsin Medical society refer?" Is it the "sound science" perpetrated by the American Medical Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration? One does not find a convincing reason anywhere in the documentation to outlaw raw milk that is produced for raw consumption. In California, where raw milk is "legal", we do not hear of people dropping dead from its consumption the way we hear of people dropping dead from FDA approved drugs prescribed by doctors. What is found, over and over again, is that the dangers lurking in the food supply, including milk, are caused by the over-processing and adulteration of food materials by an impatiently greedy food industry that has influence in government.

Other groups that lobbyed Doyle included the Wisconsin Dairy Business Association, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, and the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau said that their opposition to legalizing raw milk has to do with

our overall concern for the State’s $26 billion dairy industry. If a person becomes ill from drinking raw milk, it is not only unpasteurized milk that gets a bad image, but all milk and dairy products. Dairy farmers have invested millions of dollars promoting milk and dairy products. Dairy farmers cannot afford to have an incident adversely affect consumption.

Raw milk dairy farmers can make 3 times as much money selling raw milk to people than they make selling to a processor, and they can do it with smaller herds and healthier cows.

The Wisconsin Dairy Business Association website lists as "sponsors" many farming industry companies including those involved in banking, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and "genetic improvement", and the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association.

This is not to say that there's something wrong with participating in big business and associating with others in big business. But, as in the case of the Wisconsin Dairy Business Association, when their "sponsors" page lists Cargill, Pioneer, Pfizer, Purina, BASF, and many other national and multinational companies, one may assume that their influence probably will not come down in favor of the small, independent farmer who prefers not to have ties to agri-business and biotech.

Small, independent farmers who don't want to play the game, who believe in the importance of thoughtful, even loving, farming practice, who simply want to provide people with wholesome, nutritious food, are being harrassed by government officials, extensions of the food and agriculture industries. This makes government and governmental agencies unrepresentative and untrustworthy in the eyes of people who expect fairness from their representatives.

Food pathogens in milk for which pasteurization was found necessary over 100 years ago account for 0.01% of food-borne illness today. Food pathogens found most commonly today have emerged only in the past 30 years. Between 1990 and 2004, all milk, raw and pasteurized, accounted for less than 1% of all reported food-borne illness.

Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella in pasteurized milk caused 200,000 illnesses and 18 deaths in 1984-1985. After 40 years of controversy, only this year the FDA only recommended that the use of antibiotics in food-producing animals be reduced.

You don't have to drink raw milk if you don't want to. But if you do want to, you can't because that choice is not available. Sushi? Pack of cigarets, bottle of whiskey, .38 special, roulette...? Yes. Raw milk directly from the farmer? No.

We have many strange incongruities in our society that we don't question because our perception has been trained to accept them. On closer inspection, some are funny, some are not.

Augean Stables

In June 2010 the FDA issued a "Draft Guidance" titled "The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-producing Animals."

Basically, it recommends that farmers use antibiotics on food-producing animals only when the animal's health requires it. For many years, food-animal producers have used anitbiotics or anitmicrobials to increase the rate of weight gain and to improve feed efficiency.

It issued this recommendation because it had been determined that the "non-judicious" (euphemism for careless and abusive) use of antimicrobials was responsible for selectively evolving virulent antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that found their way into food, and into human bodies.

The FDA'a report provides some history and background which should be very embarrassing to it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress.

In 1969, a  "Joint Comittee" in the U.K. explored the issue and presented the "Swann Report" to Parliament:

The report stated, “It is clear that there has been a dramatic increase over the years in the numbers of strains of enteric bacteria of animal origin which show resistance to one or more antibiotics. Further, these resistant strains are able to transmit this resistance to other bacteria. This resistance has resulted from the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and other purposes in farm livestock”. The report also noted, “There is ample and incontrovertible evidence to show that man may commonly ingest enteric bacteria of animal origin”.

A 1970 FDA "Task Force" came up with the following:

This task force acknowledged that the understanding at the time it conducted its study was that the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals, especially in subtherapeutic amounts, was associated with the development of resistant bacteria, and that treated animals might serve as a reservoir of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens that could produce human disease.

So,

[i]n 1977, FDA proposed to withdraw the new animal drug approvals for subtherapeutic uses of penicillin and tetracyclines in animal feed on the ground that evidence showed that these drugs, when used for such purposes in animal feed, had not been shown to be safe. These two drugs were chosen because of their importance in human medicine.

But,

[t]he proposal was criticized because, at that time, there was not adequate epidemiological evidence (or only just-emerging evidence) to show that drug-resistant bacteria of animal origin were commonly transmitted to humans and caused serious illness. Subsequently, Congress directed FDA to conduct further studies related to the use of antimicrobials in animal feed and to hold in abeyance the implementation of the proposed antimicrobial withdrawal actions pending the outcome of these studies.

It might be interesting to know who in congress, or outside of congress, was responsible for this foot-dragging.

Then in 1980 The National Academy of Sciences, at FDA's request, gave this report

...that a very limited amount of epidemiological research had been completed on either the subtherapeutic or therapeutic use of antimicrobials in animal feed. According to the study report, much of the information available on the subject involved “poorly controlled studies of small numbers of subjects for brief periods”. Based on a consideration of available evidence, the report concluded that existing data could neither prove nor disprove the postulated hazards to human health from subtherapeutic antimicrobial use in animal feed. However, the report cautioned that “The lack of data linking human illness with subtherapeutic levels of antimicrobials must not be equated with proof that the proposed hazards do not exist. The research necessary to establish and measure a definitive risk has not been conducted and, indeed, may not be possible.”

Apparently, they didn't want to offend anyone. Then, FDA asked the Seattle-King County Health Department to perform a study:

In 1984, the Seattle-King County Health Department prepared a report summarizing the results of the study. The 1984 study report found that C. jejuni was a more common cause of enteritis than Salmonella. Also, it concluded that C. jejuni "does appear to flow from chickens to man via consumption of poultry products". The report stated, "isolates from human cases and those from retail poultry had similar antibiotic susceptibility patterns, including prevalence of 29.7% and 32.8%, respectively, for tetracycline resistance, which was found to be plasmid-mediated".

A 1988 Institute of Medicine report, requested by the FDA, concerning Salmonella infections that resulted in death

...was unable to find a substantial body of direct evidence demonstrating that the subtherapeutic use of penicillin or tetracycline in animal feed posed a human health hazard. Nonetheless, the Committee’s 1988 report found a considerable body of indirect evidence implicating both subtherapeutic and therapeutic use of antimicrobials as a potential human health hazard. The Committee also strongly recommended further study of the issue.

Even the World Health Organization could put 2 and 2 together correctly on the issue. In 1997, after studying the matter, it arrived at

the conclusion that all uses of antimicrobials lead to the selection of resistant forms of bacteria. Furthermore, the report stated that “low-level, long-term exposure to antimicrobials may have greater selective potential than short-term, full-dose therapeutic use". The report found that the selection of resistant bacteria has adverse consequences for preventing and treating disease in humans, animals, and plants.

A 1999 Government Accountability Office report recommended that

the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services work together to develop and implement a plan with specific goals, time frames and resources needed for determining the safe use of antibiotics in agriculture.

Also in 1999 the European Commission reported that

actions should be taken promptly to reduce the overall use of antimicrobials. Four primary recommendations were forwarded: (1) antimicrobial drugs should be used prudently; (2) infections should be prevented and resistant organisms contained; (3) research for new modalities of prevention and treatment of infections should be undertaken; and (4) the effects of such interventions should be monitored and evaluated.

A 2000 World Health Organization "Global Principles for the Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance in Animals Intended for Food" report by expert consultation read, in part:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) participated in the June 2000 WHO expert consultation, the purpose of which was to develop global principles for minimizing the negative public health impact associated with the use of antimicrobial agents in food-producing animals while providing for their safe and effective use in veterinary medicine.

The principles were part of a comprehensive WHO global strategy for the containment of antimicrobial resistance and provided a framework of recommendations to reduce the overuse and misuse of antimicrobials in food-producing animals for the protection of human health. The principles strengthened and endorsed earlier WHO recommendations such as the need to terminate the use of antimicrobial growth promoters pending comprehensive human health safety evaluations, the need to ensure that all antimicrobials for animal use are only supplied through authorized outlets (e.g., by veterinary prescription), and the need to establish surveillance systems on antimicrobial drug consumption.

And then

In December 2003, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and the World Health Organization (WHO) convened a workshop to “perform a scientific assessment of the antimicrobial resistance risks arising from non-human usage of antimicrobials and to formulate recommendations and options for future risk management actions to be considered by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) and OIE”.

The expert panel’s findings from the workshop were documented in a report which contained a number of conclusions, including: 1) “there is clear evidence of adverse human health consequences due to resistant organisms resulting from non-human usage of antimicrobials;” 2) “the amount and pattern of non-human usage of antimicrobials impact the occurrence of resistant bacteria in animals and on food commodities and thereby human exposure to these resistant bacteria;” 3) “the foodborne route is the major transmission pathway for resistant bacteria and resistance genes from food animals to humans, but other routes of transmission exist;” and 4) the “consequences of antimicrobial resistance are particularly severe when pathogens are resistant to antimicrobials critically important in humans”.

In the following year this group established some guidelines, saying, among other things, that

...good agricultural practices can reduce the necessity for antimicrobials...

In 2003 the Institute Of Medicine issued a report, "Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection and Response" that included recommendations

to “more finely target the use of antimicrobials” including expanding efforts to decrease the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in human medicine. In addition, the committee recommended that “FDA ban the use of antimicrobials for growth promotion in animals if those classes of antimicrobials are also used in humans”.

That was fairly explicit.

In 2004 in response to a request from Congress (apparently out to lunch with lobbyists for 35 years), the Government Accountability Office studied the issue again and reported

that antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been transferred from animals to humans. GAO also stated that many of the studies reviewed as part of GAO’s research found that this transference from animals to humans poses significant risks for human health. According to GAO’s findings, studies have shown two types of evidence related to the transfer of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from animals to humans. First, some studies have provided evidence of associations between changes in antibiotic use in animals and resistance to antibiotics in human bacteria. Second, GAO concluded that studies that have examined the genetic makeup of the bacteria have provided stronger scientific evidence that antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter and Salmonella bacteria are transferred from animals to humans. In those studies, strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria infecting humans were indistinguishable from those found in animals, leading researchers to conclude that the animals were the source of human infection.

Why did it take so long to arrive at the same conclusions at which the UK's Swann Report study arrived in 1969?

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services read the GAO report and issued the following comments:

“The draft report presents or refers to significant and growing evidence demonstrating the human health consequences of drug resistant infections related to antibiotic use in agriculture.” “These [11 additional] studies, along with those cited in the GAO report, all demonstrate a relationship between the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals, antibiotic resistance in humans, and adverse human health consequences as a result. We believe that there is a preponderance of evidence that the use of antimicrobials in food-producing animals has adverse human consequences.” “There is little evidence to the contrary.”

The FDA finally agrees in 2010 saying that it

...has reviewed the recommendations provided by the various published reports and, based on this review, believes the overall weight of evidence available to date supports the conclusion that using medically important antimicrobial drugs for production purposes is not in the interest of protecting and promoting the public health.

And it proposes the following 2 Principles:

1. The use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health.

2. The use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that include veterinary oversight or consultation.

It took Heracles one day. After 41 years, the FDA is still working on it.


July 2, 2010.