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> Enemies of the People
> April 3, 2009
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> Washington, D.C. -- When I first saw Henrik Ibsen's play about a  
> town that ostracizes a doctor for publicizing the fact that the  
> town's mineral baths are seriously contaminated, back in the 1960s,  
> it seemed dated. According to how I had been taught American  
> history, such a cover-up was once possible, but the Progressive era,  
> the two Roosevelts, and the New Deal had transformed America into a  
> modern, thoughtful public-health-committed country. How naive that  
> reaction seems today.
>
> You could do a relevant modern production of that play this month  
> with only a few changes. The issue, however, is a far more massive  
> public health threat than any Ibsen ever imagined -- it's the threat  
> of superbugs. These are diseases that no antibiotic can control and  
> that result from using overcrowded, factory-feedlot livestock as  
> four-legged germ-warfare laboratories.
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> Seventy percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to  
> healthy animals -- well, animals that would be healthy if they  
> weren't overcrowded and improperly fed. These antibiotics are used  
> on animals that are not sick in order to prevent disease from  
> erupting in these facilities. Such massive prophylactic use of  
> antibiotics encourages bacteria to develop resistant strains, and  
> now medicine is on the verge of running out of drugs that haven't  
> been rendered useless for human health by being misused to allow  
> animal abuse.
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> So New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter -- the only  
> microbiologist in Congress -- has assumed the role played in Ibsen's  
> drama by Dr. Stockmann. She's introduced a bill to ban the  
> nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock. And agribusiness  
> rose in protest. Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm  
> Bureau, claimed that since farmers used these drugs "carefully,  
> judiciously and according to label instructions" there was no  
> problem. "Antibiotic use in animals does not pose a serious public  
> health threat" he asserted.
>
> Oh?
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> Last year scientists tested pork being sold in Louisiana stores. Ten  
> percent of the samples tested positive for a single antibiotic- 
> resistant strain of staph called MRSA. Another study of retail meats  
> in Washington was better -- only .3 percent -- but even that rate  
> shows that feeding antibiotics to healthy pigs is, in fact, breeding  
> superbugs. A peer reviewed study by Medical Clinics of North America  
> concluded that feeding drugs to healthy animals was a "major  
> component" in antibiotic resistance. The Infectious Diseases Society  
> of America calls this a "public health crisis."
>
> Why do doctors and agribusiness disagree so vehemently? Well, if you  
> read what the Farm Bureau says carefully, they argue that the  
> superbugs in pigs don't survive cooking your pork chop -- which is  
> technically true but fatally flawed. First, the bugs in uncooked  
> meat end up on cooking surfaces and inadequately washed hands and  
> can contaminate consumers indirectly in a host of ways. But more  
> importantly, the issue is not whether we are exposed to superbugs  
> through eating meat -- it's where we breed them. Because once these  
> bacteria take hold down on the farm, they spread on their own, not  
> just through the meat counter. But by defining their arguments to  
> the question of whether superbugs survive cooking heat, the Farm  
> Bureau avoids the real issue -- this debate should be a doozie as  
> Slaughter's bill makes its way through Congress.
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> For a web-version of this email, please visit: http://sierraclub.typepad.com/carlpope/2009/04/enemies-of-the-people.html
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> Taking the Initiative is the blog of Sierra Club Executive Director  
> Carl Pope.
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