Search results: antibiotics

Maryn McKenna.  Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats.  National Geographic, 2017.

I did a blurb for this terrific book, out on September 12:

If you think raising farm animals on antibiotics is nothing to worry about, Big Chicken will change your mind in a hurry.  McKenna, a compelling writer, tells a gripping story: how antibiotics helped transform chicken-raising from backyard to industrial.  Her account of the profit-driven politics that allowed widespread antibiotic resistance should be required reading for anyone who cares about food and health, and especially for congressional representatives who have consistently failed to take action on this critical issue.

Smith, Andrew F. Food in America: The Past, Present and Future of Food, Farming and the Family Meal. 3 vols. [Volume 1: Food and the Environment; Volume 2: Food and Health and Nutrition; Volume 3: Food and the Economy]. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2017.

The prolific and ever astonishing Andy Smith has done something breathtaking: produced a three-volume encyclopedia on the environmental, health, and economic implications of food–which he wrote in its entirety.

This is classic Andy Smith: well written, well referenced, highly accurate, and covering an enormous territory.  He introduces each volume with an historical chapter and ends them with invaluable appendices giving chronological timelines and providing landmark documents.  These last are wonderful to have in one place, although finding them is a challenge (there is no list at the front).

The work that must have gone into this is beyond comprehension.  I’ve done timelines myself and have some idea of the amount of research needed to produce one.  But he’s got three covering at least 200 years and in one case starting with the Ice Age.

If you collect food encyclopedias, as I do, you will want this one.

Here’s what’s in it:

VOLUME 1: FOOD AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Introduction 1
History 5
Controversies: Going Forward 81
Climate Change 83
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) 100
Fertilizer 114
Fish and Shellfish 126
Food Waste 143
Locavores 157
Organic 168
Pesticides 178
Sustainable Food 193
Water 205
Landmark Documents 219
Chronology of Landmark Events 345
Sources of Further Information 351
Index 361

VOLUME 2: FOOD AND HEALTH AND NUTRITION
Introduction 1
History 5
Controversies: Going Forward 77
Antibiotics 79
Diet 94
Food Additives 107
Food Insecurity 118
Food Labeling 129
Foodborne Illness 145
Obesity 159
Salt 173
Soda 184
Sugar 199
Landmark Documents 213
Chronology of Landmark Events 339
Sources of Further Information 347
Index 355
VOLUME 3: FOOD AND THE ECONOMY
Introduction 1
History 5
Controversies: Going Forward 83
Advertising and Marketing 85
Aquaculture 100
Fast Food 112
Food Corporations 126
Genetically Modified Food 141
Globalization 159
Industrial Farming 171
Labor 181
Meat 195
Megagrocery Chains 207
Landmark Documents 217
Chronology of Landmark Events 331
Sources of Further Information 339
Index 347

The FDA recently published its Annual Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed in 2015 for Use in Food-Producing Animals.

The report finds bad news and good news.

The bad news :

The report shows that sales and distribution of all antimicrobials increased 1 percent from 2014 through 2015, tying for the lowest annual increase since 2009. The percentage of those antimicrobials that are considered medically important in human medicine increased by 2 percent from 2014 through 2015.

The good news: This ties for the lowest annual increase since 2009.

But here’s a summary of antibiotic use in animal agriculture:—9.7 million kilograms of medically important drugs (that’s about 20 million pounds) and another 5.9 million kilograms of antibiotics that are not important medically. (about 13 million pounds).

The report comes with a Q and A.  Here is an example:

Does a summary report exist for antimicrobial sales and distribution for human drugs?  Yes. Please see: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/ucm261160.htm.

Then go to: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/UCM319435.pdf

3.28 million kilograms of selected systemic antibacterial drugs were sold during year 2010 and around 3.29 million kilograms were sold during year 2011. Active ingredient amoxicillin had the highest proportion of total kilograms sold of all selected systemic antibacterial drug products throughout the time period examined.

OK, but the objective needs to be to decrease use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture and use them only for treatment of illnesses, not prevention.

The New York Time published its annual food issue on Sunday, this one with the theme, “Can Big Food Change?”

In the circles in which I travel, Michael Pollan’s “Big food strikes back: Why did the Obamas fail to take on corporate agriculture?” caused the biggest stir.  Here’s what set people off:

On “Outlobbied and Outgunned:”  The word I’ve been using to describe food industry lobbying against Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign is ferocious.

I’ve always thought that Mrs. Obama must have picked the goal of Let’s Move!—“Ending childhood obesity in a generation“—as a safe, bipartisan issue that Republicans and Democrats could all get behind.  Doesn’t everyone want kids to be healthy?

I can’t imagine that she could have predicted how controversial matters like healthy school lunches or nutrition standards for food advertising to kids would become.

Whatever.  The food industry’s response to everything Let’s Move! tried to do was ferocious.

Despite all that, as I’ve said, Let’s Move! managed to accomplish some important gains: healthier school meals, more informative food and menu labels, the White House garden, and—most important—getting food issues on the national agenda.

On “the food movement barely exists:” I once taught a course on food as a social movement with Troy Duster, a sociologist then at NYU, who had much experience teaching about social movements.

He made one point repeatedly: those who are in the middle of a social movement cannot possibly judge its effectiveness.  You can only know when a movement has succeeded or failed when it is over.

This one is not over yet.

This movement, fragmented in issues and groups as it most definitely is, may not have clout in Washington, DC, but it is having an enormous effect on supermarkets, food product manufacturers, fast food chains, the producers of meat, eggs, and poultry, and young people in this country.

How else to explain:

• The vast improvement in the quality of foods sold in supermarkets
• The rush of food product makers to remove artificial colors, flavors, trans-fats. and other potentially harmful food additives, including sugars and salt
• The insistence of fast food chains on sourcing meat from animals raised without hormones or antibiotics
• The actions of meat, egg, and poultry producers to care for their animals more humanely
• Soda tax initiatives in so many cities

And my personal favorite,

• The enormous numbers of college students clamoring for courses about food systems and the role of food in matters as diverse as global resource inequities and climate change.

As Troy Duster kept telling us, it’s not over until it’s over.

While waiting for enlightenment, let’s celebrate the proliferation of food organizations.  They are all working on important issues and doing plenty of good.

And yes, let’s encourage all of them to move beyond the local, engage in national politics, and put some pressure on Washington to come up with better food policies.

Here are the other articles in the magazine, all of them well worth reading.

• George Steinmetz, SuperSize: The dizzying grandeur of 21st century agriculture (photos)
• Corby Kummer, Pie in the sky: Is it possible to make a more healthful frozen pizza? (I’m quoted)
• Ten Genoways, Close to the Bone: The fight over transparency in the meat industry
• Malia Wollan, Brand new hue: the quest to make a true blue M&M

Ellen K. Silbergeld. : How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals, and Consumers.  Johns Hopkins Press, 2016.

Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences, epidemiology, and health policy at Hopkins, has long been a strong advocate for getting toxic substances out of our food supply.  Here, she takes on our system of industrial farm animal production in a plea for better treatment of everyone and everything involved in it.

Big issue #1: the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.  This not only induces bacteria to become resistant to those drugs, but also is unnecessary.

Big issue #2: the failure of HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point—the method for preventing food safety problems) to prevent harmful, antibiotic-resistant bacteria from reaching the public.

Overall, she says:

The inextricable relationship between industrial food animal production and the environment challenges us in two ways.  First, we are all at risk–not just those of us who consume the products of industrially raised animals–and second, decontaminating food products will not contain the public health problems of this industry.  It is time to think about industrial food animal production as an industry in terms of environmental pollution, and it is long overdue to recognize that its pollution footprint, like its production, is industrial in scale (p. 127).

As for the remedy, “agriculture is an industry, and as such it carries certain obligations.”  These include, among others:

• Industries must abide by laws that prevent monopolization, price fixing, and overconcentration.
• Industries must bear full liability for unsafe products.
• Industries must obey the labor laws of the country.

She has plenty more to say about government’s role in all this.

Our role is to insist that industry and government follow and apply laws.  We had best get busy.

McDonald’s ran a full-page ad in yesterday’s New York Times:*

“At McDonald’s we’re on a journey: What’s important to you is important to us.”

The ad says McDonald’s is taking these actions [with my comments]:

• Removed artificial preservatives from Chicken McNuggets and other items [Fine, but no big deal in my book.]
• Removed high fructose corn syrup from hamburger buns [And replaced it with what?  Sugar?  This matters? I’m guessing the price of HFCS must be close enough to the price of sugar to make this possible.]**
• Committed to only source chickens that have not been treated with antibiotics [OK.  Now we’re talking important.  For this alone,  McDonald’s deserves high praise.  My only question: by when?]*** 

The ad also summarizes the company’s additional actions, done and promised:

• Burgers are 100% beef
• Eggs are freshly cracked
• Salads feature baby spinach, kale, Tuscan red leaf lettuce, and carrots
• Buttermilk chicken uses real buttermilk
• Milk is sourced from cows not treated with rbST
• 2 billion sides of fruit were served (including 59 million clementines)
• Espresso beans are Rainforest Alliance Certified
• Eggs will be cage-free by 2025

Amazing, no?

It’s worth a field trip to see how all this works in practice.  I’m on it.

Additions, corrections, and updates

*Jill Cornish writes that the ad also appeared in the Washington Post.

**I get a Bingo for this one.  Martijn Katan writes: “The price of beet sugar fell below that of HCFS in April 2015. By June 2016, 1 lb of HFCS-55 cost $0.412 as opposed to $0.297 for beet sugar.”  He even sends a reference: www.cornnaturally.com/Economics-of-HFCS/price-calculator.aspx

***Andy Smith points out that “In 2015, McDonald’s announced that it would stop buying chicken raised with non-therapeutic, medically-important antibiotics by 2017– but a few weeks ago announced that it had already done so.”  He too provides a reference: See QSR. “McDonald’s Eliminates Antibiotics From Its Chicken,” QSR Magazine, August 2, 2016. Retrieved at https://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/eliminates-antibiotics-its-chicken.

Thank you readers!  Much appreciated.

The Senate just voted to reverse a decision of Congress last year to remove catfish inspection from the FDA (which is usually in charge of regulating seafood) and give it to the USDA (which usually regulates meat and poultry).

Why did the 2008 and 2012 farm bills say that catfish inspection should be given to USDA?

It depends on whom you ask.

• Defenders say it’s because USDA has the resources to protect us against unsafe Vietnamese catfish.
• Critics said it’s to protect the Mississippi catfish industry against the food safety hazards of cheap imported catfish from Vietnam.

Indeed, the USDA inspection program is finding antibiotics and other unapproved carcinogens in catfish imported from Vietnam.

This issue, however, is a sticking point in US negotiations with Vietnam over the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Vietnam wants the USDA catfish inspection removed as an unfair barrier to trade.

As I wrote about this issue in 2013,

What is this about?  Not fish safety, really.  It’s about protecting catfish farmers in the South and setting up “more rigorous” safety criteria that will exclude competitive foreign catfish imports, especially from Vietnam.

Food retailers and retail trade associations are for reverting inspection to FDA. They say USDA’s catfish inspection program will take years to allow imports from Vietnam, thereby causing the cost of domestic catfish to rise.

But today, Politico Morning Agriculture reports that more than 100 House Republicans are urging repeal of the USDA’s catfish inspection program, pointing out that

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has 10 times stated that this program is “duplicative” and at “high risk” for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement…This is not a food safety issue.  USDA acknowledges that catfish, regardless of where it comes from, is considered a “low risk food.”

When I wrote this issue previously, I got comments that I needed to better appreciate the superiority of USDA’s import safety program.  As I said in response:

It’s not surprising if USDA’s import safety system is better than the FDA’s.  USDA gets $14 million a year to run its currently non-operating catfish inspection system.  The FDA gets $700,000 and, according to the Government Accountability Office, has managed pretty well with it.

My conclusion then and now:

If the political fuss over catfish inspection reveals anything, it is why we so badly need a single food safety agency—one that combines and integrates the food safety functions of USDA and FDA—to ensure the safety of the American food supply.

Documents

• The Senate resolution
• USDA’s catfish inspection program

Food Chemical News reports that the Senate Appropriations bill comes with report language instructing the FDA to:

• Conduct a risk assessment to see how harmful it really is to eat Listeria-tainted frozen vegetables [these, presumably, would be cooked before eating].  CRF Frozen Foods had to recall of 358 organic products after 7 people became ill.
• Release no sodium guidelines before the National Academies of Science has a chance to update the Daily Reference Intake (DRI) for sodium [which will take years].  The report says “it is “imperative that any guidance be issued using the latest sound science…based upon an updated DRI report.”  House directives said the same thing.  [The FDA has just released voluntary sodium guidelines for public comment].
• Release its overdue report on food traceability systems: “The Committee directs the FDA to collaborate with science-based international and industry-led food traceability initiatives of the type recommended by the pilot projects…[and] to make publicly available information on FDA’s efforts to encourage…traceability initiatives.”
• Reconsider its E. coli standard.  The Senate views this standard as too stringent and disruptive of raw milk cheese businesses.
• Actively engage stakeholders in best practice standards for medical foods. “They should work together on “forming a framework for a distinct regulatory pathway for medical foods that does not encumber its progress towards approval for patient use.”
• Better enforce standards for antibiotics in shrimp imports.
• Sample olive oil bottles at retail to determine if they are adulterated, and report findings to Congress.
• Report on efforts to implement regulations for the growing commercial human milk industry.

Some of these directives would improve food safety, but some would not.

All make more work for the FDA.

Does the Senate also plan to appropriate sufficient funds for the FDA to do all this in addition to what it is already doing?  Want to take bets?