What the USDA Doesn’t Want You to Know About Antibiotics and Factory Farms

By Tom Philpott
MotherJones

Here is a document the USDA doesn’t want you to see. It’s what the agency calls a “technical review”—nothing more than a USDA-contracted researcher’s simple, blunt summary of recent academic findings on the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections and their link with factory animal farms. The topic is a serious one. […]

Historic Lawsuit: FDA Sued over Antibiotics Allowed in Farm Animals

A first-of-its kind antibiotic lawsuit aims to curb unnecessary use of drugs in farming and accuses the FDA of putting lives at risk.
By Leah Zerbe
Rodale
RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—A coalition of environmental and public-health organizations filed suit Wednesday against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claiming the agency’s lax stance […]

High Levels of Drug-Resistant Bacteria Found in Supermarket Meat

by Matthew Heller
FairWarning.org
High levels of drug-resistant strains of bacteria that cause staph infections are present in nearly half of the meat and poultry sold at U.S. grocery stores, a study says. And researchers found that the food animals themselves — rather than processing or storage practices — generally are the source of the contamination.
Experts from the Translational Genomics Research […]

The U.S. should follow Denmark and stop giving farm animals low-dose antibiotics

by Scientific American
For more than 50 years microbiologists have warned against using antibiotics to fatten up farm animals. The practice, they argue, threatens human health by turning farms into breeding grounds of drug-resistant bacteria. Farmers responded that restricting antibiotics in livestock would devastate the industry and significantly raise costs to consumers. We now have empirical […]

Taking Antibiotics for Gastritis? A New Treatment Alternative May Surprise You

Taking antibiotics to treat gastritis? The remedy may be as simple as boosting your inner ecosystem with beneficial microflora.
by BodyEcology.com
Gastritis: also known as inflammation of the stomach lining.
It’s a burning or gnawing pain in the central stomach area at about the level where your ribcage comes together in the center of the chest. This feeling […]

Antibiotic Overuse in Dentistry Still Common

By Dr. Mercola
Researchers at the University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand compared impacted third molar extractions in the same patient with and without antibiotic prophylaxis. Ninety-five patients were divided into two groups and served as their own control, receiving antibiotics for one surgery and placebo for the other.
No significant differences were observed between test […]

Congresswoman Slaughter Fights to Keep Antibiotics Effective, Reduce Unnecessary Use in Animals

by Louise M. Slaughter
Slaughter Reintroduces the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act
WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, today said we must take action to limit the overuse of antibiotics in animals so these life-saving drugs remain effective in the treatment of human illnesses.
Today Slaughter is reintroducing H.R. […]

Antibiotic Resistance: Don’t Flush Your Drugs!

Think it’s a good idea to flush your antibiotics when they expire? Think again! Flushing any medication risks contamination of our drinking water.
by BodyEcology.com
What you flush down the toilet can end up your drinking water.
Out-dated pharmaceuticals or prescription medicine that you no longer need can be tricky to get rid of. If you throw pharmaceuticals […]

Overuse of Antibiotics “Greatest threat to human health”

The Sydney Morning Herald

Excerpts:

“Experts are warning of a not-too-distant future where life-saving medical interventions will be too risky to undertake; a future where chemotherapy is impossible and organ transplants are no longer an option. They say this would happen in a world without effective antibiotics, and they are calling for more public […]

Supermarket Chicken Harbours Superbugs

by CBC news

Chicken bought at major supermarkets across Canada is frequently contaminated with superbugs — bacteria that many antibiotics cannot kill — an investigation by CBC TV’s Marketplace has found.

Marketplace researchers — along with their colleagues at Radio-Canada’s food show L’Epicerie — bought 100 samples of chicken from major grocery chains in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

The […]