Currently browsing posts about: Animals

I thought this 2023 report was well worth a look.

Microbial diseases of animals can be transmitted to humans, and vice versa (witness COVID-19 in mink and zoo animals).  Some of these have led to serious epidemics.  Lots of people are worried that Confined Animal Feeding Operations could easily become the source of new and deadly forms of influenza.

But what interested me in this report is that industrial farm animal production is one of a great many sources of potential infectious disease transmission.

A few of the many examples, some well known to have caused Salmonella infections:

• Pets
• Hunted animals
• Production of bat guano and coyote urine (who knew?)
• Backyard chickens
• Crocodile farming
• Petting zoos
• Research animals

The report is cautious on the topic of the origin of COVID-19:

At the time of this writing, scientists continue to debate the precise origins of the virus but there is no question as to the impact it has had. Indeed, few aspects of daily life in the United States remain untouched.

The implication is clear.  We need much better monitoring of animal markets for pathogens.

The United States has no comprehensive strategy in place to address the threat of zoonotic disease. There are serious regulatory deficiencies across almost every animal industry. Large information gaps exist, and disease can seep between these cracks.

Lots to learn here and think about here.

The FDA issued its most recent report on antibiotics late last year: 2022 Summary Report On Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals, along with Antimicrobial Sales and Distribution Data 2013-2022.

It did this in response to public concerns about antibiotic use in food animals: if antibiotics are used at subtherapeutic doses, they might induce microbial resistance to drugs used to treat diseases in humans.

This is not a theoretical concern.  It’s a real problem.

It’s also a problem because the vast majority of antibiotics were used as growth promoters or to prevent infections in animals crowded together—not to treat disease.

In 2014 or so, the FDA ruled that medically important antibiotics could no longer be used as growth promoters in farm animals.  That rule went into effect in 2017.

The FDA’s good news: the amounts of antibiotics used in farm animals has declined since then.

Are medically important antibiotics still used for non-therapeutic purposes?

The report says that since 2017, zero antibiotics are administered for growth promotion.

If you wonder whether this is really true (as I do), consider that $11.2 million kilograms of antibiotics were used in food animals in 2022.  This is a decrease from the 15.6 million kg used in 2015, but still a lot.

Of these drugs, 63% are administered in feed, and 31% in water.

All antibiotics still used as growth promoters are supposed to be drugs not used in human medicine.

I’m not the only skeptic on this one.  See:

I.  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Antibiotics in agriculture: The blurred line between growth promotion and disease prevention.

In an investigation published today, the Bureau revealed how US farm animals are still being dosed with antibiotics vital to human health, despite efforts to curtail such usage and combat the spread of deadly superbugs. We also found that a regulatory loophole means that using antibiotics to make animals fatter – a process known as growth promotion – is technically still possible, despite this practice being banned in January 2017.

II.  Nature: Antibiotic use in farming set to soar despite drug-resistance fears. Analysis finds antimicrobial drug use in agriculture is much higher than reported.

III.  Vox: Big Meat just can’t quit antibiotics: Meat production is making lifesaving drugs less effective. Where’s the FDA?

According to an analysis published in September by the Natural Resources Defense Council and One Health Trust, medically important antibiotics are increasingly going to livestock instead of humans. In 2017, the meat industry purchased 62 percent of the US supply. By 2020, it rose to 69 percent.

Does the FDA check?  It has guidance for industry on The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals, but this guidance is non-binding.

Obviously, the FDA needs to do more.  Its officials told Vox:

IPES-Food, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, has a new report: The politics of protein: Examining claims about livestock, fish, “alternative proteins” and sustainability 

The report contains a deep analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of these eight claims.

The report’s argument is that the focus on protein is overblown.

For decades, the perceived need for more protein has led to distractions and distortions in development programs, flawed marketing and nutritional campaigns, and calls to increase the production and trade of meat, dairy, and protein-enriched foods.

Today, the evidence clearly shows that there is no global ‘protein gap’: protein is only one of many nutrients missing in the diets of those suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and insufficiency of these diets is primarily a result of poverty and access.

The report displays data to back up its arguments in attractive and easily understood charts.  Its conclusions are clearly marked.  Example:  part of the conclusion for Claim #5: Alternative proteins are a win-win.

In conclusion, there are too many uncertainties and data gaps, and too much variation between systems, to make a definitive statement on whether ‘alternative proteins’ are more environmentally sustainable than animal source foods as a whole. Bold and categorical claims about ‘alternative proteins’ being a ‘win-win-win’ are therefore likely to be misleading…The validity of claims about ‘alternative proteins’ (and the purported benefits of these products) ultimately comes down to how foods are produced, what food systems we consider to be desirable and viable, how we weigh up trade-offs ….

Sensibly, the report makes only three recommendations:

Comment:  I think this report is well done, well written, and well presented.   But here’s where this nutritionist gets cranky: Why title it Protein?  Protein is a nutrient, not a food.  Using protein to stand for foods that contain it is an example of “nutritionism,” the reduction of  the benefits of a food to its single components.

I had to search the report for an explanation of what IPES means by protein.  As far as I can tell, its writers assume you know what it means.  But sometimes the report refers to meat and protein, implying that meat means beef, and protein means protein-containing animal foods other than beef.  At other times, the report uses protein to include beef as well as poultry, fish, dairy, and insects.   But what about vegetables and grains?  They have protein too.  Legumes are particularly good sources; grains have nourished entire civilizations.

I realize that protein—a chefs’ term—is widely understood to stand for all foods, particularly from animals, that contain protein, but that’s nutritionally incorrect because basically every naturally occurring food contains some protein (OK, lettuce doeesn’t have much).

I wish everyone would find a better term, one that calls meat meat, if that’s what’s meant.

The FDA says use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food animals decreased by 3% between 2019 and 2020  (For details, see the full report).

Is this good news or not.  Use is down from 2015-2016, but up from 2017.  As Wired puts it, “Antibiotic Use in US Farm Animals Was Falling. Now It’s Not.”

According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, use of antibiotics as growth promoters in food animals is still a big problem, with lots more going for use in animals than in humans.

Or, to be a bit more precise:

The Pew Foundation thinks much more needs to be done to limit use of antibiotics in food animals.

FDA: get on this please.

As the author or co-author of two books about pet food (Pet Food Politics and Feed Your Pet Right), I have an ongoing interest in animals in general and dogs and cats in particular.  They too are infected by Coronavirus.  Here are some recent reports.

Pangolins: They are the most illegally trafficked mammal in the world, prized as food and for their scales used in traditional Chinese medicine.  They are also suspected as being the reservoir for SARS CoV-2.

The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.

LIVESTOCK: This article offers the intriguing but unconfirmed suggestion that industrial pig production—not pangolins in wet markets—could be the origin of covid-19.    But other data suggest that pigs do not get Covid-19 (neither do chickens or ducks, but ferrets do).

TIGERS AND LIONS: A tiger at the Bronx Zoo—Nadia—developed a dry cough; her test for covid-19 came out positive.  Three other tigers and three lions also had the same cough.  How did they get this?  The zoo says:

Our cats were infected by a person caring for them who was asymptomatically infected with the virus or before that person developed symptoms…Appropriate preventive measures are now in place for all staff who are caring for them, and the other cats in our four WCS zoos, to prevent further exposure of any other of our zoo cats.

DOGS: I’ve written about this previously.  The few cases of Covid-19 in dogs were apparently transmitted by their humans.  We don’t have evidence that dogs can transmit the virus to humans—yet?

CATS:  Cats, like lions and tigers, can be infected with Covid-19 and can spread it to other cats.  This is known from a study in which Chinese virologists injected the virus into the noses of domestic cats.  Can they spread it to humans?  More research, please.

The team, led by virologist Bu Zhigao at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, introduced the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the noses of five domestic cats. When two of the animals were euthanized six days later, the researchers found viral RNA and infectious virus particles in their upper respiratory tracts.

CAN PETS (OR ZOO ANIMALS) TRANSMIT THE VIRUS TO HUMANS?  There is no evidence for this so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control, World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and World Health Organization.  The WHO says:

Can I catch COVID-19 from my pet?

• We are aware of instances of animals and pets of COVID-19 patients being infected with the disease;
• There is a possibility for some animals to become infected through close contact with infected humans. Further evidence is needed to understand if animals and pets can spread the disease;
• Based on current evidence, human to human transmission remains the main driver;
• It is still too early to say whether cats could be the intermediate host in the transmission of the COVID-19.

WHEN IN DOUBT: Wash your hands.

OTHER ITEMS ABOUT ANIMALS

• It’s hard to recruit and retain food animal veterinarians in the United States
• A dog team in Maine is delivering supplies to elderly residents shut in by the virus

RESOURCE: The World Organization for Animal Health has a useful Q and A on Coronavirus and pet and food animals.

Christopher Schlottmann and Jeff Sebo.  Food, Animals, and the Environment: An Ethical Approach.  Routledge, 2018.

The authors are colleagues at NYU.  They asked me for a blurb which, after reading this book, I was honored to do.  Here’s what I said:

Schlottman and Sebo have produced an utterly superb analysis of the ethics of eating animals, brilliantly distinguished by crystal-clear thinking, accessible writing, and plenty of insight into values and sources of bias.  Every eater will have much to learn from this book.

The book goes from theory to practice and takes on all of the tough ethical issues involved in food production, food consumption, and food activism (legal and illegal).

The authors’ approach is impressive:

We designed this book to provide readers with both the critical thinking tools and basic concepts and information necessary to analyze the many challenges and values concerning food, animals, and the environment.  This includes explaining how to make clear and consistent arguments, how to assess the relationship between facts and values, how to assess the relationship between theory and practice, and how to think rigorously and systematically about the empirical impacts of food systems and the ethical questions that these impacts raise.

This is exactly what this book does.

Whether or not you choose to eat animal foods (and I do), the environmental, health, and moral issues raised by animal agriculture deserve serious discussion.  They get that discussion here.

Food and Water Watch has a new report advocating a ban on factory farms.

Why?  Because factory farms:

• Produce enormous volumes of waste
• Fuel climate change
• Pollute air and water
• Exploit workers
• Harm animal welfare
• Drive antibiotic resistance
• Harm rural communities

This is ten years after the report of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (on which I served).

Not much has changed but this new one is particularly well researched and is a welcome addition to the ongoing debate.

When I wrote my books on pet foods some years ago, Feed Your Pet Right and Pet Food Politics, I was reading a lot about veterinary practice and how it has shifted from large animals to small.  The shift is so great that hardly anyone trains to be a farm-animal veterinarian anymore.  Almost all students focus on pet dogs and cats.

Among practicing veterinarians,

• 75 % treat pets
• 6% work treat horses
• 8% treat farm animals

The USDA wants to change that, at least a little.

It announced an award program of $4.5 million to pay off the school loans of up to 49 veterinarians who promise to work for three years in rural America where veterinarians are scarce.  The maximum award is $75,000, which is expected to cover half the average school-loan debt.  Recipients may be required to devote at least 80% of their time to work on food animals.

Sounds like a great opportunity to get terrific experience.  I hope lots of recent grads apply.