Practical Issues > Health > Vegan Index

AlterNet / By Martha Rosenberg



January 30, 2012 |











"To raise turkeys without antibiotics would increase the incidence of illness in turkey flocks," sniveled the National Turkey Federation's Michael Rybolt. Antibiotics "reduce the level of potentially harmful bacteria which result in infections and sickness," contended the National Milk Producers Federation Robert D. Byrne (key word, "potential"). Antibiotics decrease the amount of land needed to raise animals and provide a lower-priced "wholesome" product for the public, said one farm operator after another. One even claimed that manure is reduced because animals eat less. In their twisted thinking that would make factory farming green.

While most ag reps at the hearings defended the use of antibiotics for "treatment, prevention and control of disease," the AVMA's Christine Hoang actually went so far as to call the less feed that antibiotics make possible a "health-promoting" effect and a "therapeutic use." Maybe she meant health and therapy for the bottom line.

After the hearings, W. Ron DeHaven, who was the USDA's top vet before leaving for industry and helming the AVMA, penned a rambling, almost incoherent 18-page letter with 62 footnotes to the FDA. Cephalosporin-resistant "human pathogens" aren't increasing, says the letter, and even if they are, they're not affecting human health and even they're affecting human health, how do you know it's from the livestock drugs and even if it's from the livestock drugs, the FDA has no legal authority to ban cephalosporin. Got that?


Nowhere in the letter is mention of the rea$on Big Meat won't let go of antibiotics: the industry is able to raise thousands of animals in crowded conditions that would otherwise kill them for prices as "artificial" as the drugs they are raised on. Big Pharma's invasion into farming is probably the biggest reason for the demise of family farms which are no longer able to compete in price.



It was not a great surprise that the FDA's new cephalosporin livestock rules, four years later, had the Agribusiness Seal of Approval. "We thought the original order was too broad and unnecessarily prohibited uses that were not likely to cause problems for human health," said AVMA's Dr. Hoang, perhaps tempted to take a bow.

The new rules, which no longer ban cephalosporins, limit "large and lengthy dosing in cattle and swine," says the New York Times, but allow uses "the F.D.A. has not specifically approved," and wide use in ducks and rabbits. Yum. Still, the new rules prohibit one unsavory factory farming practice that few are aware of--the "routine injections of cephalosporins into chicken eggs."

In 2008, while inspecting egg operations, the FDA caught hatcheries injecting cephalosporins directly into chicken eggs, "rather than by the approved method of administering the drug to day-old chicks." The same year, Tyson Foods was caught injecting eggs with a different antibiotic, the human antibiotic gentamicin, linked to serious side effects. Tyson especially had egg on its face, because the previous year the government disallowed its slogan "Raised Without Antibiotics," because the ionophores it adds to poultry feed are antibiotics. Ionophores are antibiotics added to poultry and cattle feed for the same "feed efficiency" as produced with other antibiotics but they are not used in humans. Tyson had just backpedaled into the new phrase, "Raised Without Antibiotics That Impact Antibiotic Resistance In Humans," when it was caught playing fast and loose with gentamicin. Oops.






What is a surprise is that Big Pharma, supposed medical professionals, is also "flat earth" when it comes to antibiotic resistance. Elanco, the animal division of Eli Lilly, says that, "Monitoring antibiotic resistance in raw meat products is not an appropriate measure to represent the bacteria that reach the consumer," in an online brochure, "because cooking destroys these bacteria, and dead bacteria cannot transmit antibiotic resistance." Plus--who minds germs in their food if the germs are dead? Elanco also asserts, in the brochure, that livestock antibiotics keep occurrences of "food poisoning" down as if food poisoning were unrelated to farm conditions! In fact the size and industrialization of US factory farms is such a factor in food poisoning, it drove the passage of new federal food safety laws in 2010.

The Animal Health Institute, representing Abbott, Bayer Healthcare, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Elanco/Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer is even more flat earth.

"There is no scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have any significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people," it deadpans in a brochure created specifically to oppose PAMTA. "People would be more likely to die from a bee sting than for their antibiotic treatment to fail because of...resistant bacteria in meat or poultry." But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that hospital-associated infections, which are likely to be antibiotic resistant, cause or contribute to 99,000 deaths each year. Under 100 people die a year from all stinging insects.

And AVMA? "At the heart of this discussion is the premise that the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture directly contributes to bacterial resistance in humans," says the vet group, urging its members to fight PAMTA. A livestock antibiotic ban in Denmark, "has not shown any clear declines in antibiotic resistance patterns in humans," says AVMA, though CBS News and Food Safety News find otherwise.

Antibiotic resistant intestinal infections increased in Europe after certain antibiotics were introduced on farms, reported CBS. But after Denmark declared a ban, it "drastically reduced antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and food." The Denmark's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries reported that the ban resulted in "overall reductions of antimicrobial resistance countrywide," said Food Safety News.

Nor is AVMA the only veterinary group that sides with industry over animals. The American Association of Swine Veterinarians was one of the groups filing a friend-of-the-court brief supporting this week's Supreme Court ruling, National Meat Association v. Harris, that overturned California's humane slaughter law. The law was enacted after the 2008 Westland/Hallmark school lunch meat scandal in which cows too sick and weak to walk were videotaped forklifted and "water-boarded" to the slaughter line. The humane slaughter law prohibits buying, selling or receiving downer animals and processing, butchering or selling them for human consumption. It requires non-ambulatory animals to be immediately euthanized.

Big Meat and its veterinarians argued the California law "criminalizes" the work of federal slaughterhouse inspectors who are presumably preventing slaughterhouse atrocities without the California law's help. But former USDA inspectors Lester Friedlander, DVM and Dean Wyatt, DVM have testified that federal inspection is a mockery that puts the public at risk at the same time it permits appalling animal abuse.


At first it looked like PAMTA might have a friend in the FDA's newly appointed deputy commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein, who was a pediatrician and the former food safety staffer for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). Both he and the newly appointed FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, had public health backgrounds and were not industry insiders.

At a 2009 House Rules Committee meeting, Sharfstein surprised lawmakers by indicating that the FDA supported PAMTA. The ag lobby was enraged because Sharfstein's remarks implied White House Office of Management and Budget approval, yet there had been no briefing.

"You deliberately tried to blindside some of us on this committee, and we don't appreciate that," barked Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA), former House agriculture subcommittee on livestock chairman, to Michael Taylor, FDA senior adviser on food safety (considered a friend of agribusiness, until the Sharfstein remarks).
But by early 2011, Kennedy had died, Sharfstein had left the FDA abruptly and without comment, and Big Meat had already showed lawmakers where they could put their cephalosporin ban. Congress seemed to have little appetite left to go up against Big Meat.

So it's no surprise that in 2012, the FDA is waving through major livestock antibiotics, attaching Mickey Mouse restrictions on others, and US meat is full of super bugs--even meat labeled "raised without antibiotics."



Fair Use Notice and Disclaimer
Send questions or comments about this web site to Ann Berlin,