Antibiotic-Resistant 'Superbugs' Creep Into Nation's Food Supply | Hacker News Reader

Antibiotic-Resistant 'Superbugs' Creep Into Nation's Food Supply

cnbc.com

37 pointsbconway53 comments

>These bacteria are finding ways to get around antibiotics in animals

>"We've actually run out of antibiotics that really keep animals healthy," Price said. "We're finding strains of bacteria in animals that are resistant to so many antibiotics."

How about this novel solution: stop raising animals in a way that requires them to guzzle down tons of antibiotics in order to survive.

I love how this article fails to even mention the possibility that livestock animals do not need to ALWAYS BE SICK. Preposterous.

The problem with capitalism is that pure capitalism does not account for social issues, be them human-related or animal-related. Neither does communism.

But people still believe that raw capitalism (or, in cases like North Korea, communism) can succeed.

Awareness seems to be spreading about the negative health implications of our factory-food system as a whole. It's possible that demand will shift. Capitalism will adapt.

I do not believe that the demand will shift, simply as the amount of people depending on cheap food is too high. As better living conditions for the animals result in lower profits, these products simply will not be bought as no one can afford them.

Agriculture in the US is absolutely nothing like "raw capitalism". It is extremely regulated. Farmers are subsidized. It's nothing like "raw capitalism" in several very important ways.

Cash crops, sugar, meat and milk production are extremely regulated and subsidized.

However, the production of many agricultural products like fruits, vegetables and nuts is pretty close to "raw capitalism."

You mean, were the US to implement "raw capitalism", whatever that is, the externalities from antibiotic overuse are going to be priced in correctly? What mechanism do you suggest?

If it were "extremely regulated", then there would not be regular news reports about contaminated meat scandals and stuff like "The Meatrix" would not exist. Simply put, if there are regulations, then they're either just pro forma or not enforced enough.

There are thousands of pages of regulations on federal meat standards. I think your statement would work better if you said, "If it were 'well regulated/sensibly regulated'..."

It's also possible that regulations are confusing, unenforceable, out of date, or addressing symptoms instead of causes.

I don't disagree with you, but I think your comment needed some clarification.

I would rather say that "Big Money" is preventing existing regulations from being enforced.

The biggest issue is, of course, the sequester and the general lack of funding for food inspection - if there were enough food and animal safety inspectors, food scandals would simply not exist because of inspection pressure.

The second issue, tightly connected with the funding issue, is lobbyism. The "food lobby" has only recently lobbied for making recording of animal rights violation a crime...

People are denial about fascism in the USA. Just look at how many pharmaceutical products are approved by the FDA only to be eventually recalled. Of further concern are the pharmaceuticals advertised as having side effects which "may result in death."

How can the FDA allow these products?

On the one hand, yes sometimes bad things get approved in error. On the other hand, pharmaceuticals are already very tightly regulated. Plain old Aspirin wouldn't be approved by the FDA if it were invented today, it's too dangerous by their standards.

What some refer to as "crony capitalism" is more properly labeled "fascism." (Corporate intermingling with government at the expense of the plebiscite) As evidence there's the trend toward appointing people with strong ties to the very entities which they are appointed to regulate. (Can you say "conflict of interest?)

http://www.naturalnews.com/020029_Byron_Richard_Andrew_von_E...

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/02/pharmaceutical-c...

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/12/case-study-in-corporatoc...

Compare these facts to the recent crackdowns on natural foods.

http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/litigation-FDA.htm

As for "tightly regulated" pharmaceuticals, have you any citations in support of this claim?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmaris/2012/10/10/fda-recall...

Fascism is "extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice."

I can see how strongly held views might lead one to exaggeration, but I don't think hyperbole lends anyone's position much authority.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Your definition is a new interpretation, and is only one of many forms of fascism.

I'll continue to adhere to the definition which predates the internet, Wikipedia, and the other sources which have chosen to ignore the words of the father of modern fascism. Ergo, The USA is, arguably, the epitome of a fascist nation. I'm not exaggerating at all.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm

Well, I'll certainly admit we do have a lot of fasces in our government symbology.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces#Fasces_in_the_United_Sta...

Just to play devil's advocate: sometimes the dangers of a drug aren't evident until many years after exposure. The FDA tries to balance the benefit of the drug with the dangers. Otherwise, many beneficial and lifesaving drugs wouldn't hit the market until decades after the initial trials.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5583878

The recent sequestration doesn't affect anything that led to the current standards. It may affect the regulatory environment going forward, but we're in the current situation independent of it.

I agree that food safety is a concern, but believe the source of the problem lies in the American relationship with food. More, bigger, and cheaper lead to the conditions we see.

... or (and I think this might be a pretty effect) they fail to take into account unforeseen side effects.

It's slightly more complicated than that.

You see, farmers have discovered that if you feed certain animals antibiotics even when they aren't sick typically the animals will grow faster and bigger. This is great for farmers because more pounds of meat means more cash. But there are some significant negative externalities to operating what is effectively a ginormous petri dish veritably designed to encourage the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Last year the FDA finally made antibiotics in live stock require a prescription [1]. So now you need a complicit vet before you can continuously dose your farm animals with antibiotics.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/us/antibiotics-for-livesto...

I doubt that will be much of a problem. There are a lot of vets out there with huge student loans and dire employment prospects. You could probably find one to write whatever you wanted.

This is the only thing where I fully support the policy of the Green parties worldwide.

Overusing antibiotics and other medicine, just to be able to grow up more animals in the same space, is plain greed and animal cruelty.

The state should set a fixed minimum for meat prices (under which no product may be sold) and at the same time impose minimum levels of animal rights (roaming space, food variety, no declawing/tail cutting etc.). I know many will shoot me for advocating state regulation, but the free market most obviously has FAILED here.

Agreed 100%. I hope this whole super-bug thing has a silver lining, in that it results in better treatment for animals bred for slaughter.

.. and also require the same standards of any imported meat.

But why buy meat at all? In terms of efficiency and "feeding the world" the cow lags behind quite seriously compared to that other GMO soya

Beef is a particularly inefficient protein source.

The point is the taste and the fact that you can't nutritionally fully replace meat.

I'm talking about the production of beef, not its metabolic efficiency. There are meat products that are much more efficient than beef.

Agreed, yet it will be difficult, if not outright impossible, to restructure US (and maybe Mexican) agriculture to raise e.g. pigs or chicken instead of cattle; also, each of these animal races carry their own individual risks - bird flu and "cannibalistic picking" (dunno the English term) in birds, and pig flu for pigs.

The last food-animal-related health problems I heard of were multiple different bird and pig flu varieties, the last major problem with cattle was BSE/Jakob-Creutzfeld disaster years ago. So I think the cost of perfectly fine, but "preventively killed" animals should be weighed in, too.

You can't fully replace meat nutritionally? Any source for this assertion?

At least not in child nutrition, unfortunately the only usable reference which is not vegan propaganda I could find are in German (http://www.focus.de/gesundheit/ernaehrung/gesundessen/tid-21... and http://www.dge.de/modules.php?name=News&file=article&...).

TL;DR: It is extremely difficult to sustain the needs of a child with a pure vegetarian/vegan diet.

Anecdata, but I know a woman who's never, in her entire life, not been a vegetarian, and she's probably the healthiest person I've ever met. It's easier than you think.

> TL;DR: It is extremely difficult to sustain the needs of a child with a pure vegetarian/vegan diet.

Tripe. I think people forget that even with the naive diet pyramids a lot of us grew up with, eggs (rightly) were counted as meats. It's been well understood for a long time how to function without eating meat, as in, the flesh of animals, if you have eggs available as part of your diet.

Pure veganism requires some actual thought, yes.

> TL;DR: It is extremely difficult to sustain the needs of a child with a pure vegetarian/vegan diet.

So really, meat is wholly replaceable in the human diet, though doing so in children may be difficult.

You get more than just protein from beef. Grass-fed beef, and ruminants in general, contain a wealth of human nutrition.

It's not the product, is the producer. The perverse incentives in our meat and farming industries drive production of a vasty inferior product at an unsustainable price.

What is the mass-market meat product that is more expensive to produce than beef?

Farmed carnivorous fish (e.g. tuna)? I've started getting farmed bluefin at the Japanese fishmarket in Berkeley (confusingly called Tokyo Fish Market); it's essentially as good as wild bluefin, and I'll eat it, but is even more inefficient and expensive to produce than beef.

High quality meat is irreplaceable in the optimal human diet.

[citation needed]

EDIT: I'm a vegetarian. I'm well aware there are nutrients that are harder to get on purely plant-based diets, but it's far from impossible. I'm getting my Omega 3s (all DHA and EPA, not merely ALA) from algae, and my B-12 from plant sources, too.

What am I missing by not killing sentient things for sustenance?

We have canines for a reason: our evolutionary and digestive history includes meat.

I'm sensitive to the moral issues involved, and understand the arguments against eating pigs and cows; however, I think it's reasonably ethical, and biologically optimal, to at least eat fish and eggs. And no matter what, farm animals should be raised humanely (pasture farms, not factory farms).

That our evolutionary history includes eating meat is by no means an argument that the nutritional benefits of meat are irreplaceable.

Evolution dictates that we live long enough to reproduce and fight off anything that wants to kill our young. There is no reason to assume that it might somehow be a guide to what an "optimal human diet" (silly expression) might be.

And cave homes are irreplaceable in optimal human architecture?

Ironic that the broad regulations you're advocating wouldn't address the issue at hand, that you mentioned in the previous paragraph.

How about to make it illegal to give antibiotics to animals that are not sick, or making new antibiotics illegal for animal use for a number of years?

Lance Price is quoted in this article.

Here is his testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health. It's a pretty short read.

http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/file...

If you've ever had grass fed beef as opposed to the stuff you normally find in the grocery store, you know that the meat is much tastier, and much better for you. For example, grass fed beef is a good source of omega 3s.

The problem with most livestock in the US is that it is raised on corn, which is not a nutritious food for them (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_shouldn%27t_cows_eat_corn).

However, it does fatten them up. So, while they are fed this unhealthy diet, they are also fed antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to be sold.

You are what you eat. If you want better food and humanely raised livestock, then educate yourself and stop buying the cheap stuff.

The USDA regulates antibiotics for animals, while the FDA regulates them for humans. The USDAs job is to promote agriculture, and they do not appear to be as concerned about the kinds of side effects that the FDA is. Two very different missions.

It's too bad irradiating food has such negative connotations, as it would be safer than the current approach.

Original source data:

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/A...

Why don't we have more food irradiation?

Antibiotics probably improve yield throughout the process, not just after processing.

Giving antibiotics to livestock causes them to gain weight. I suspect that this profitable feature is the primary reason that antibiotics are used in cattle. Does anyone in this field have any info to verify or refute?

The primary reason for anti-biotics is due to the fact that the farmers feed their livestock nutritionally devoid but massively cheaper corn - which weakens the overall immune system. Antibiotics are not needed when "organic" measures are put into place and cows are free range and fed better, nutritionally beneficial foods to begin with. But that's costlier, so, not going to happen on a commercial scale, regardless of how inefficient and unsustainable it is to continue.

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