Pork Superbug Documented

[Hissyspit]

From Gianni Ortiz via Mark Crispin Miller:

NAIS, as it is written, wouldn't improve this situation.

Pork superbug documented
As evidence mounts of deadly bacteria from CAFO pigs, will the FDA
and the USDA act?

Posted by Tom Philpott at 9:33 PM on 27 Jan 2009

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2009/1/27/63221/5325

Last June, Iowa State researcher Tara Smith delivered preliminary results
of a study linking the deadly, antibiotic-resistant pathogen MRSA to pigs in concentrated animal feedlot operations. Despite mounting evidence of the
link from Canada and Europe, U.S. public-health officials had never formally studied the issue, even though MRSA kills something close to 20,000 Americans every year -- more than AIDS.

In a must-read blog post at the time, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's ace health reporter Andrew Schneider documents the craven inaction of the FDA and the USDA as this public-health menace gained force.

As Schneider wrote:

"An effective way to say there isn't a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat"

Now Smith's research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Examining CAFOs scattered in Iowa and Illinois, Smith and her team found the MRSA strain in 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of the workers who tend them. The sample size is small; more study must be done. Will the government undertake it?

A real reckoning with the MRSA-CAFO link could deliver a devastating blow to the meat industry. To keep animals alive while stuffed together by the thousands, standing in their own collected waste, it's evidently necessary to dose them with lots of antibiotics. CAFO conditions destroy animal's immune systems; antibiotics pick up the slack. Take them away, and the CAFO model might crumble.

That, presumably, is why the Bush agencies so studiously ignored the problem. Let's hope the Obama FDA and USDA do better.

Update (2009-1-28 8:40:10 by Tom Philpott):

The Seattle PI's indispensable Schneider reacts to the publication of Smith's findings:

"So I called some disease detectives and food safety specialists in agencies responsible for ensuring that our food supply is safe. You could almost hear them cringe over the phone. And, no, to the best of their knowledge, neither the FDA, USDA nor CDC had launched systematic testing of the U.S. meat supply for MRSA. One physician said that a study was being done on the MRSA strain (ST398) that Smith had found on the pigs but added, 'I don't think it has anything to do with meat.'"

[customerserviceguy]

1. At some point, meat labeled "irradiated" will be made available

and I will be among the first in line to buy it.

[Hannah Bell]

7. Oh, good, then they can stack the shit higher, & just irradiate the meat. Win-win!

[customerserviceguy]

11. We would still demand that whatever

standards are in place for handling meat would still be applied. Nobody's going to buy meat that is obviously contaminated. But you cannot see microbugs, and when they become superbugs, then it gets very, very dangerous.

[Hannah Bell]

20. who is this "we"? the same folks inspecting peanut plants? you're being naive.

if you mean the general population, "we" don't "demand" anything unless there's a big scandal.

if you mean legislators, ha. they "demand" what their paymasters tell them to.

[customerserviceguy]

22. "We" are the new government

Please do not confuse it with the Bushco laissez-faire that allowed the peanut plants to do whatever they wanted. And I believe we've had the 'big scandal'. I expect President Obama to get to work on it quite soon, but he's been a bit preoccupied with the economy lately.

And how does NOT irradiating food (and labeling it as a choice for consumers who would desire it) change anything you've said?

[Hannah Bell]

25. i'm not part of the new government, are you?

and how does irradiating food bring reform of the fundamental problems with the food supply?

answer: it doesn't. it makes it easier to intensify them, since the check provided by fear of disease outbreaks is pushed back.

shit food for the masses, super-special organic no pesticide no gmo no radiation "all-real" food for elites.

[customerserviceguy]

26. I guess I consider those who work for Democratic candidates

to be a 'part' of the new way of doing things, I'm sorry that cynicism may have left you with a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" feeling. I'm looking to seeing the Obama Administration dealing with ALL of the leftover Bush messes, but I understand that he needs to prioritize.

Offering the choice of irradiation of food supplies to people who want to protect themselves from superbugs that even the very highest standard of food handling procedures cannot detect or prevent is just another way for consumers who wish to pay more for safety should have. It is not an excuse for sloppy handling practices that have led to the stories we now see just about every month, involving non-animal sources of food in ever greater amounts.

You could have made the same case when commercial refrigeration was made economical to provide to the food distribution network. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have added that level of safety to our food transportation system.

[Hannah Bell]

27. " that even the very highest standard of food handling procedures cannot detect or prevent "

this is a reframe. high standards can indeed detect such pathogens. high standards *aren't in place,* system-wide.

the "superbugs" are increasing concentration of agriculture/food production and the tools used to control the resultant larger disease vectors, e.g. mrsa with routine use of multiple antibiotics on livestock raised in increasingly more factory-like, crowded conditions.

irradiation will produce more of the same.

commercial refrigeration is the same as an ice-chest, but more reliable. a difference in quality, not kind.

people have *always* used temperature to control spoilage. but temperature has natural limits.

we didn't "add that level of safety" to some pre-existing food transport system. rather, refrigeration allowed the further expansion, financial concentration, & de-localization of previously existing systems.

[formercia]

9. They can leave the iridated feces attache and call it a vegetable side-dish.

Soylent Green.

[customerserviceguy]

12. See my response above

Or maybe you're one of the people who actually celebrate superbugs as a way to get people to stop eating meat? Well, most of the recent cases of food-bourne infection have involved non-meat products, I'll be happy to find irradiated versions of those, too.

None of it would be a substitute for inspections of facilities, it would just be a last chance way to kill superbugs that we don't have any other way of dealing with.

[Kalyke]

16. Considering pork insulin is nearly identical to human insulin,

many, many people have been ingesting the equivalent of Soylent Green for years:

The use of different types of animals as donor and recipient has particular relevance for diabetes, since pork insulin is almost identical to the human molecule and many diabetics now take the porcine preparation.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/21/us/camouflaged-donor-tissue-holds-transplant-promise.html?sec=health

[SpiralHawk]

10. And I will be among the many who will reject it

don't want no mutant, chemicalized, hormonized, irradiated cold, dead flesh.

Help yourself.

[customerserviceguy]

13. And if you want to live as close as possible to being an Amish farmer

then more power to you. I'm sure there will be plenty of people worried about irradiated food turning into something they've seen on a cheesy horror film, but the real nightmare would be getting some incurable strain of superbug from food that has not been treated with the most modern technology.

Your only problem is making sure there are enough fearful people like yourself to ensure that there is still a market for foods that have the possibility of doing serious harm.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Not fear, knowledge

Food denuded of life force and subject to distorting, deadening radiation is, in the long run, a source of malnutrition.

Toward the heedless, profit-grasping impulses of corporations to serve us mutant food, I take the stance of my American ancestors, who long ago, through experience, established the wisdom of the Seven Generations teaching: In every major deliberation or action, to consider the impact on the Seventh Generation of our children to be born.

I am in no hurry to swallow the food, or the propaganda, coming from the huge corporate conglomerates serving it up. I invite their so-called 'customer service' to get back to me in about six or seven more generations, and we will have some real evidence to weigh about the alleged 'benefit' of exposing our food to nuclear waste.

You can continue to blow my considerations off as fear in an effort to bury the ugly truth below consciousness (avidya), but most people deeply involved with the land know it as basic wisdom.

bon apetit.

[customerserviceguy]

23. Life force?

What exactly is that? I usually eat my food after its been killed, except if there are microbes in it. Them I want dead, too.

How does killing the pathogens in your food make it 'mutant'? Do you feel the same eeriness (and perhaps hear the same sci-fi theremin music) when you kill them by cooking in a pot on the stove? I'd really prefer something that kills ALL of the superbugs, not just the ones I can get by heating the food before the point where it becomes shoe leather.

I support full labeling of irradiated food, let consumers make a choice. And if it hurts my great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren (that's about six or seven generations, isn't it?) then they can damn me from the year 2309, if they don't have bigger problems by then. I sure wouldn't want to live the way we did with the food standards of 1809 (when you must agree, people were deeply involved with the land); my descendants might see their way clear to understand me and my fear of dying from diarrhea from some superbug that we hadn't yet figured out how to genetically engineer a cure for.

[surrealAmerican]

18. But what if it isn't consumption of meat that is spreading this?

It's quite likely that it is physical contact with the pigs by farm workers, who then spread the germs to other people they come in contact with. Irradiating the meat will not stop this spreading from person to person. We still need to reform our farming practices.

[customerserviceguy]

24. There's no disputing that

I am not calling for irradiation as the total solution to the problems of contamination, I just favor it as an additional step.

Two hundred years ago, refrigeration was a pretty darned imperfect thing; if you were lucky enough to have some ice, you could keep things a bit longer in the spring in underground storage cellars. Having modern compressor-driven refrigeration systems does not excuse shoddy food handling processes, these modern inventions just limit the damage that such procedures sometimes give rise to. I suppose that putting food in close contact with ammonia solutions probably freaked out people who only considered ice an acceptable substance to have near food.

I favor offering irradiation as a labeled choice for the same reason.

[Hekate]

2. KnR. BushCo destroyed the food-safety departments. How fast can Obama reconstitute them?

:argh:

Hekate

[Angleae]

3. As fast as congress can fund them.

And that could take a while.

[Hekate]

6. Competent people have to be lured back. Plus the "institutional memory" was lost...

... when so many dedicated civil servants were driven out by the Bushies.

It'll take awhile, for sure.

Hekate

[truedelphi]

8. I guess as soon as Geithner and his crew are done "fixing" the economy.

Or as soon as Velsick has received all his marching orders from Monsanto.

[Holly_Hobby]

4. Oh boy, I feel a rant coming on

Surely, the industry knew this would happen. Problems stemming from overuse of antibiotics is well known. Is there anyone that doesn't know this?

Mother Nature fights back, with a vengeance. Further proof of evolution.

It won't be long before all feedlot meat is infected with incurable bacteria.

[Tabasco_Dave]

5. I know the experts say you can serve pork a Little rare

today because of new farming techniques but i still cook pork well done. Better safe than sorry.

[Kalyke]

15. I can't digest pork and haven't eaten it in nearly 20 years.

There's something to be said about the belief systems of Jews and Muslims, who preached that eating pork was unclean.

One scientific journal stated that even a small amount of pork is bad for the human body. The protein in pork is almost identical to humans. To digest the pork, the body has to develop enzymes that eat away at the stomach. Doctors will tell people with heart problems not to eat pork, yet they won't tell people to avoid it so they can prevent problems.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Pork-and-More---Unclean-for-All-Stomachs-Not-Only-the-Jewish-Kind&id=934520

(Granted, this is a blog and one person's opinion, but there are links to more information than I care to post right now)

[ecstatic]

17. This makes me think about becoming a vegetarian

I love meat, but this is just disgusting!

[Fireweed247]

21. This makes me happy to be one

but it is not just the pork...and the mad cow, it's the peanut butter, the spinach, the lettuce, the cat food...then there are the GM foods, and the hormones and antibiotics in the dairy...I sure miss the days I felt I could trust our food supply....

[Mrs. Overall]

19. I posted something about this a month or so ago and the my post was mostly made fun of--

A Seattle news reporter did a story on MRSA found in many samples of ground pork. Quite a few on DU laughed at it as "fear mongering". I'm glad to see it taken a bit more seriously now.

[KamaAina]

28. And the Seattle P-I just went down

:tinfoilhat: