Free Antibiotics -- in U.S. Food and Water

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet. Posted February 11, 2009.

But since milk is tested for residues, and farmers dumping positive milk in tankers must pay for the entire tanker as punishment -- plus, they can't sell any milk "until a negative farm test result is obtained" -- the public is safe.

Nor do you have to worry about eggs.

Despite FDA inspections that found "ceftiofur was being administered by egg injection rather than by the approved method of administering the drug  to day-old chicks," and despite detection of antibiotic residue in egg yolks of treated chickens -- after withdrawal periods and after cooking -- a study in the January 2005 issue of Molecular Nutrition & Food Research said antibiotics are not "a food-safety issue for eggs," said Blair Van Zetten, on behalf of United Egg Producers at the hearings.

Of course, most people realize antibiotics are probably in the water (follow the dead fish) and meat. But so are resistant microbes, it turns out. Scientists at the University of Iowa College of Public Health found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) -- the granddaddy of antibiotic resistant mircobes-- in Iowa pigs in the January 2009 journal, PLoS. And MRSA strains were found in beef, pork, veal, lamb/mutton, chicken, turkey, fowl and game in a study in the December 2008 International Journal of Food Microbiology.

Now antibiotics are turning up in crops too.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota found antibiotic residues in the vegetables after only six weeks of greenhouse propagation, says Environmental Health Service -- much less than a normal growing season.

"Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure," said Holly Dolliver a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls who was on the research team.

In addition to MRSA-like infections, cephalosporins can cause diarrhea, nausea, rash, electrolyte disturbances, vomiting, headache, dizziness, oral and vaginal candidiasis, pseudomembranous colitis, eosinophilia, clotting disorders, Antabuse-like reactions and fever. Not a complete list.

Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital also suspect antibiotics in the epidemic of pediatric asthma and allergies. And what about our national obesity, ask others, given the fact that antibiotics fatten animals?

Meanwhile pharma sales to the ag industry -- known as "advances in animal health within the livestock industry" on the Hill -- rose five percent in 2007 according to the Animal Health Institute.

2009 should be a good year too.

See more stories tagged with: health, agribusiness, public health, fda, big pharma, antibiotics

Martha Rosenberg is a columnist and cartoonist who frequently writes about the impact of the pharmaceutical, food and gun industries on public health. A former medical copywriter, her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as on the BBC and in the original National Lampoon.

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