Scientists cry fowl over the FDA's regulatory failure

[marmar]

Scientists cry fowl over the FDA's regulatory failure
Overuse of antibiotics in factory farming kills thousands every year, yet the industry is force-feeding chickens pharmaceuticals

Richard Schiffman
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April 2012


In 2005, the antibiotic fluoroquinolone was banned by the FDA for use in poultry production. The reason for the ban was an alarming increase in antibiotic-resistant campylobacter bacteria in the meat of chickens and turkeys – "superbugs", which can lead to a lethal form of meningitis that our current antibiotics are no longer effective against.

Antibiotic-resistant infections kill tens of thousands of people every year, more than die of Aids, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. This problem is on the rise because antibiotics are recklessly overused, especially in the commercial livestock industry, where 80% of all antibiotics manufactured in the US end up.

Fluoroquinolone used to be fed to chickens primarily to stimulate their growth. But why did the banned substance show up recently in eight of 12 samples of "feather meal", the ground-down plumage leftover from commercial poultry production?

This was just one of the mysteries uncovered in a study conducted jointly by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State University. The research, published last month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, uncovered a whole slew of other drugs in the feather meal that the scientists had not expected to find there. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/27/scientists-cry-fowl-fda-regulatory-failure

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[Trillo]

2. Perhaps it's not a failure.

Perhaps accelerating hard to treat diseases is seen by some as desirable.

[appal_jack]

3. This is serious.

Feather meal is often used as a nitrogen source by organic vegetable growers.

K&R

-app