Hi MM Re Sars, you might find this interesting:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DynamicGenomics.php Dynamic Genomics Evidence has emerged that the cocktail of drugs and environmental hazards to which Gulf War veterans have been exposed all target a special part of the genome that's responsible for the immune response. The consequences are startling, and may have far-reaching relevance for diagnosis and prevention of other chronic diseases. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports. Re antibiotics... Antibiotic use In 1969, a British panel called the Swann Committee recommended that antibiotics used to treat people or drugs closely related to medical antibiotics -- which could produce resistant bacteria -- should not be given to animals. The World Health Organization reinforced the recommendations in 1997 -- 28 years later. To take one antibiotic: Farmers have been using an estimated 125 metric tons of the antibiotic avoparcin a year as a growth promoter in chicken feed. Avoparcin is very similar to vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic reserved for serious illness in people who are not responding to other antibiotics. In Denmark, for instance, in 1994, 24 kilograms of vancomycin were used for human therapy, whereas 24,000 kg of avoparcin were used in animal feed. In 1997 Japanese scientists discovered that Staphylococcus aureus bacteria had developed resistance to vancomycin, the last line of defence against this killer disease, which had previously developed resistance to penicillin, methicillin and cloxacillin. Deaths have since been reported in several parts of the world when doctors were unable to treat the disease. ProMED reported in December 1999 that the use of avoparcin in poultry feed had finally been discontinued wordwide following pressure by governments and doctors on the manufacturer, Roche Vitamins. The February 2000 issue of the University of Florida's Poultry Letter reported that the poultry industry in Denmark, which had voluntarily stopped using all antibiotics in feeds in 1998, had found, nationwide, raising more than 100 million birds a year, that there had been no major outbreaks of disease, and that although the birds had eaten more food, they weighed more at slaughter -- and were cheaper to produce. There was no need for the antibiotics in the first place. In 1999, a major British food chain, Marks and Spencer, refused to purchase chickens which had been grown using antibiotics for growth promotion. In December 1999, Britain's biggest producer, Grampian Country Food Group, which supplies 200 million broiler chickens a year, announced it would stop using antibiotics as growth promoters, in response to consumer demands for healthier eating. Updates "FDA to Ban 2 Poultry Antibiotics It Says Make Germs Drug-Resistant", Washington Post, October 27, 2000: The Food and Drug Administration announced plans yesterday to ban two antibiotics widely used by poultry farmers to keep chickens and turkeys healthy, saying the practice increases the danger that humans will become infected with germs that resist treatment. "Bayer Refuses To Recall Poultry Antibiotic", Environment News Service, December 5, 2000: Health, consumer and public interest groups this week criticized the Bayer Corporation for not voluntarily recalling an agricultural antibiotic that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says might cause antibiotic resistance in humans. http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2000/2000L-12-05-09.html "A Prescription for Poultry: Challenging Bayer Corp. to Stop Misusing Antibiotics", Environmental Defense Most people know that bacteria from uncooked chicken can cause a nasty case of food poisoning. What many don't know is that antibiotics are losing their effectiveness against such illnesses. Bacteria have developed increasing resistance to fluoroquinolones, the antibiotics often used to treat severe gastrointestinal infections. Part of the problem is the unnecessary overuse of these drugs on farm animals. http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pubs/Newsletter/2001/Jan/e_antibi.html "Scientists See Higher Use of Antibiotics on Farms" New York Times, January 8, 2001 Antibiotics are being used far more heavily in pigs, cows and chickens than has been revealed by the drug and livestock industries, a public interest group is saying today, citing as evidence its own calculations of the drugs' use on farms. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/08/health/08GERM.html "70% of all antibiotics given to healthy livestock", Environment News Service, January 9, 2001: Excessive use of antibiotics by meat producers -- eight times more than in human medicine -- contributes to an alarming increase in antibiotic resistance, a new study reveals. Every year in the U.S., 25 million pounds of valuable antibiotics -- about 70 percent of total U.S. antibiotic production -- are fed to chickens, pigs, and cows for nontherapeutic purposes like growth promotion, says the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). This finding -- 50% higher than the livestock industry's estimate for all animal uses -- is the first transparent estimate of the quantities of antibiotics used in meat production. "It puts everyone's health at risk," said Dr Charles Benbrook, an independent economist and co-author of the report. http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-09-09.html The Union of Concerned Scientists report "Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock", executive summary -- also, full report downloads (pdf), press statement, Antibiotic resistance pages, Rogue's gallery of foodborne diseases: http://www.ucsusa.org/food/hogging_exec.html "Antibiotics on the Farm", The New York Times, January 9, 2001: Most of these drugs are administered in small doses to farm animals not to cure sickness but to promote more growth on less feed and to prevent the infections that come with crowding in feedlots and confinement systems. [The amount being used] may be as much as 50% higher than it was in 1985. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/opinion/09TUE2.html "Setback in battle against superbugs" -- Guardian Weekly, April 19-25, 2001 A new drug hailed as a key weapon against drug-resistant "superbugs" may already be losing its power. Linezolid ("Zyvox") is used to treat patients with pneumonia and other infections associated with vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE). In three out of five recent test cases at the University of Illinois in Chicago the drug has failed. "Antibiotic Resistant Genes Traced From Farms To Groundwater" -- Environment News Service, May 1, 2001 CHAMPAIGN, Illinois: Genes resistant to tetracycline, a common antibiotic, have been found in groundwater as far as a sixth of a mile downstream from two swine facilities that use antibiotics as growth promoters. The finding shows the potential for spreading antibiotic resistance back into the food chain of animals and people, researchers say. For more than 50 years, U.S. farmers have used tetracycline and other antibiotics to enhance the growth of livestock. http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-01-09.html "Eat Well, Eat Antibiotic-Free: New guide for meat raised without antibiotics" Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Widespread overuse of antibiotics in raising animals for food has helped create "superbugs," bacteria resistant to these drugs. Scientists now link this agricultural use, and meat consumption, to rising numbers of human infections that are harder to treat because they respond poorly or not at all to these compromised antibiotics. Eat Well, Eat Antibiotic-Free provides background on the problem and tells consumers where to buy meats raised without antibiotics in their state: from local and national producers, supermarkets, co-ops, community supported agriculture networks and restaurants. http://www.iatp.org/foodsec/library/admin/uploadedfiles/Eat_Well_Eat_A ntibiotic-Free_2.htm "Health Canada bans swine antibiotic carbadox" -- Reuters, August 13, 2001 Health Canada last week banned the sale of the controversial swine antibiotic, carbadox, after receiving reports of misuse and accidental contamination. Carbadox, a veterinary drug that is mixed into livestock feed, was approved in the 1970s for use in Canada and the US to promote growth in swine as well as to prevent and treat dysentery and other conditions. Health Canada said tests showed that when the by-products of the drug are metabolized, it can cause cancer in rats. Carbadox is sold by the animal health division of Pfizer Inc. http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12000 See IATP Listserv Archives: Message Archive for Antibiotics and the Food System ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://208.141.36.73/listarchive/index.cfm?list_id=84 "Regulators hide true extent of dangerous drug levels in poultry products" -- Britain's Soil Association challenges senior officials' claims that "99% of poultry meat and 97% of eggs are free of detectable residues." The report, "Too Hard to Swallow -- the truth about drugs and poultry", says: "Despite repeated assertions by regulators that nearly all poultry products are free from detectable residues, figures show clearly that about 20 per cent of chicken meat and 10 per cent of the eggs tested contain residues of drugs deemed too dangerous for use in human medicine." http://www.soilassociation.org.uk/SA/SAWebDoc.nsf/bdedfca988b2db3c8525 6207004f45a9/ c262081be69aded080256a5e005a011f?OpenDocument "Get Those Antibiotics Out of My Hamburger!", TomPaine.com, September 4, 2001 -- The American Medical Association (AMA) recently added its authoritative voice to an increasingly global call for an end to the routine use of antibiotics in agriculture. With the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unwilling, or unable, to act, our medical arsenal is rapidly being depleted of one of its chief weapons in the fight against food-borne illness. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11423 "Human resistance to antibiotics worries WHO", Reuters, September 12, 2001 -- Humans are building up dangerous levels of resistance to modern antibiotics that could leave them vulnerable to killer diseases, the UN World Health Organization said. Farmers who use antibiotics to fatten up livestock and poultry are aggravating the problem because microbes on animals build up defenses against the drugs, then jump across the food chain and attack human immune systems, WHO said. http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/09/09122001/reu_44935.asp "$17 billion spent researching new drugs in the past five years could be lost just as quickly without global action" -- World Health Organization, Press Release WHO/39, September 11, 2001 http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2001/en/pr2001-39.html "Poultry Industry Quietly Cuts Back on Antibiotic Use", NY Times February 10, 2002 -- The poultry industry has quietly begun to bow to the demands of public health and consumer groups by greatly reducing the antibiotics that are fed to healthy chickens. Three companies which produce a third of the chicken consumed by Americans each year say they have voluntarily taken most or all of the antibiotics out of what they feed healthy chickens. But there is no way for the consumer to know whether one of these companies' chickens has been treated with antiobiotics. Treating a few sick birds requires treating the entire flock, and flocks often number more than 30,000. The only way for consumers to be certain the chickens they buy have not been treated with antibiotics is to purchase those labeled antibiotic-free, or organic. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/national/10CHIC.html See Poultry for small farms http://journeytoforever.org/farm_poultry.html - From: Countering myth with facts FYI - News that's not in the news http://journeytoforever.org/fyi_previous2.html#0405 >http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&ncid=718&e=6&u=/a >p/20030619/ap_on_bi_ge/mcdonald_s_antibiotics > >With all the concern as to bio-weapons being voiced over the last >couple of years, I have sometimes thought that, when we write the >history of these times we may have to conclude that we have been >fashioning some of the most deadly bioagents with a worldwide effort >involving millions of workers, by failing to curb our use of >antibiotics as feed for animals. When SARS first appeared, my first >thought, from the way it seemed to appear and be covered by the press, >was that it was a bioweapon. But I don't know where it came from. >Perhaps it was simply a natural development and another possibility, >raised in a news story some weeks after the first appearance, is that >it may have arisen as a result of human over-use of anti-biotics. >Dunno. > >I don't think we are over-concerned about the development of >bioweapons. They're hideous, frightening and of legitimate concern, >and I'm very glad to see them more discussed and more attempt being >made to stop their development or use, even if some would argue the >attempts are misdirected. > >At the same time, I think we have ignored this other related problem >for far too long of the over-use of anti-biotics as feed for animals. >I've said awhile back in this conference, and repeat here, that it is >one of the most dangerous, if not *the* most dangerous, environmental >problems on Earth. It is also one of the most needless problems, >brought on by this bizarre and un-necessary practice. Haven't there >been posts documenting that there are other affordable animal-raising >practices which can lead to healthy animal growth which do not involve >this lousy anti-biotics-as-feed practice? > >MM > > > >McDonald's Curbs Antibiotic Use in Meat >48 minutes ago Add Business - AP to My Yahoo! > > >By DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business Writer > >CHICAGO - McDonald's Corp. said Thursday it is directing its meat >suppliers worldwide to phase out the routine use of growth-promoting >antibiotics in animals because of concerns that the practice lessens >the drugs' effectiveness in humans. > > >AP Photo > >Related Quotes >TSN >DJIA >NASDAQ >^SPC > 10.80 >9179.53 >1648.64 >994.70 > +0.05 >-114.27 >-28.50 >-15.39 > > > >delayed 20 mins - disclaimer >Quote Data provided by Reuters > > > > > > >Missed Tech Tuesday? >You can still check out our exclusive guide to getting a lot of >digital camera for just a little cash - plus more. > > > > > >McDonald's is the first major fast-food chain to take such a step. > > >The decision by the world's biggest restaurant company came after a >year of consultations with environmental, science and consumer groups >that had pushed for cutbacks. Those organizations hope the move by one >of the largest meat buyers marks a turning point in the way U.S. >farmers raise animals. > > >The policy does not prohibit the use of antibiotics to treat sick >livestock. It is aimed instead at antibiotics routinely given to >animals to promote growth. > > >McDonald's is telling its direct suppliers ÷ those that control all >stages of animal production ÷ to phase out such antibiotics by the end >of 2004. Direct suppliers provide most of McDonald's poultry and 20 >percent of its meat. > > >Direct suppliers will be checked periodically and will be asked to >certify every year that they are complying. > > >The Oak Brook, Ill.-based company also is offering incentives to >indirect suppliers of beef and pork to follow the policy. > > >Doctors are increasingly confronting germs that have become >antibiotic-resistant. Many scientists believe that the overuse of >antibiotics in humans and livestock is causing many drugs to lose >their effectiveness by speeding up the rate at which bacteria become >resistant. > > >The animal drug industry, however, argues that using antibiotics on >farm animals makes food safer. > > >"As a company committed to social responsibility, we take seriously >our obligation to understand the emerging science of antibiotic >resistance and to work with our suppliers to foster real, tangible >changes in our own supply community and hopefully beyond," said Frank >Muschetto, a McDonald's senior vice president. > > >"McDonald's is asking producers that supply over 2.5 billion pounds of >chicken, beef and pork annually to take actions that will ultimately >help protect public health." > > >Environmental and consumer groups praised the company. > > >"McDonald's new policy demonstrates that reducing antibiotic use is >both feasible and affordable," said Gwen Ruta of Environmental >Defense, which worked with the fast-food chain on the changes. > > >Tyson Foods, a top direct supplier of poultry to McDonald's, also >worked on the changes. > > >"Along with McDonald's, we believe it is critical for our company and >our industry to utilize antibiotics in a responsible manner, which >preserves their long-term effectiveness in both human and veterinary >medicine," said Archie Schaffer, a senior vice president of >Springdale, Ark.-based Tyson. > > >The Coalition for Animal Health, made up of trade groups representing >the animal production, animal feed and animal health products >industries, disputed the reasoning behind the new policy. It said >disease rates have risen in Europe since the use of antibiotics as >growth promoters was sharply lowered there. > > >The Union for Concerned Scientists said McDonald's should have gone >even further by addressing antibiotics used for disease prevention. > > > > > >According to the scientists' group, an estimated 70 percent of >antibiotics and related drugs in the United States are given to >healthy pigs, cows and chickens to promote growth and prevent disease. > >McDonald's stock fell 49 cents to close at $21.56 on the New York >Stock Exchange (news - web sites). > >Last year, under pressure from animal rights groups, McDonald's >started requiring its suppliers to adopt minimum standards for the way >chickens are raised. It set a precedent followed elsewhere in the >industry. > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! 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