IATP has issued a press release detailing a new study that found MRSA present in retail meat products at nearly double the rate suggested by previous research. Read more.
Driven to Distraction: Food, chemicals and child behavior will address the latest science and policy reforms now being debated around synthetic food dyes, colorings and their alternatives. Read more and register.
Healthy Food Action’s David Wallinga, MD has authored a chapter on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal agriculture in the American Academy of Pediatrics new Pediatric Environmental Health manual.
An annotated bibliography from Keep Antibiotics Working lists articles showing evidence of links between antibiotic resistance and overuse of anitbiotics in animal agriculture.
A resource for buying chicken raised without antibiotics and arsenic for schools, hospitals and other purchasers. View the guide.
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by Andrew Ranallo
From IATP's Think Forward blog.
A rapidly growing body of evidence is spotlighting the overuse of antibiotics—and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria it breeds—in pork production as a widespread and serious danger to the American food supply and public health.
Today, IATP issued a press release detailing a new, peer-reviewed study we conducted in partnership with the University of Iowa College of Public Health finding methicillan-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)—a bacteria that can cause serious human infections of the bloodstream, skin, lungs (pneumonia) and other organs—in retail meat products at nearly double the rate previous research suggests.
The samples, 395 in total, were collected from a total of 36 retail stores in Iowa, Minnesota and New Jersey. Among these samples, S. aureus was isolated from 256 samples (64.8 percent) and of those, 26 pork samples (6.6 percent of the total) were found to contain MRSA.
Take a deadly bacteria like S. aureus and make it resistant to antibiotics and you have a dangerous, difficult to treat and costly public health threat. According to 2005 estimates, MRSA accounts for about 280,000 infections and nearly 19,000 deaths a year in hospitals. Infections outside of the hospitals, in communities and on farms, are rising as well.
Our latest study comes in the wake of other research published in 2011, and one as recent as earlier this week out of Michigan, suggesting that using antibiotics in pig feed increases the number of antibiotic-resistant genes in gastrointestinal microbes in pigs—even resistance for antibiotics other than those administered.
The growing evidence against nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feed speaks for itself. Threats like deadly MRSA are only increasing, and unless additional testing can inform both food policy and the American consumer, the trends will continue. We know the danger, now we need action.
Read the press release for more, or the full report.
