E. Coli Is Focus of Conversation Lately

E. coli in burger sparks meat industry controversy
The meat producing and processing industries have been taking criticism that they’re not doing enough to prevent E. coli contamination.

Published: 10/11/2009
By Rebecca Ernst

In the wake of a stark exposé on safety practices in the beef industry that appeared last week in The New York Times , consumers are taking a second look at the meat they eat.

The media backlash after the article’s publication has paved the way for another debate over food safety regulation, in particular the limited role inspections and testing play in keeping ground beef contaminated with E. coli off the market.

“Testing of product, either raw materials or finished products, is something that has limited usefulness,” said Craig Hedberg, professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota. “We can’t test every square inch of an animal’s carcass to see if there’s bacteria present … it just would be too expensive.”

Contrary to the recent media buzz, most facilities are extremely clean, said Ryan Cox, professor of meat science at the University.

“If you were to go into a modern meat facility,” he said, “it looks very similar to a surgical suite in a hospital.”

Cox explained that meat industry practices are so stringently regulated that “to infer in some way that we have an unsafe system would be certainly an error.” Read More

E.coli has become the hot topic as of late. Starting with the New York Times and going through the Larry King Live show last night, it’s the featured conversation all of a sudden. One of the things from last nights show that was unbelievably absent from most of the conversation was the fact that E. coli is very easy to eradicate. Patrick Boyle only mentioned it briefly at the end of the show when he said that proper cooking of meat will eliminate any contamination. Between the New York Times and Larry King last night, the conversation was all about questioning the safety of beef and talking to people that suggested we should stop eating meat all together. So if the solution to all of these problems is a meat thermometer, why isn’t that talked about? It’s a good example of the sensationalized media we are dealing with today. It’s a shame that both of these institutions didn’t use their resources to help educate people more about this, and instead they only worked to raise more fear and doubt about the world’s safest, most affordable food supply.

NYT Editorial about Antibiotics

Farms and Antibiotics
NY Times Ediorial
Published: July 23, 2009

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in this country are fed to farm animals. These animals do not receive these drugs the way humans do — as discrete short-term doses. Agricultural antibiotics are a regular feed supplement intended to increase growth and lessen the chance of infection in crowded, industrial farms.

These practices are putting both humans and animals increasingly at risk. In an environment where antibiotics are omnipresent, as they are in industrial agriculture, antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases quickly develop, reducing the effectiveness of common drugs like penicillin and tetracycline.

Despite that danger, the Food and Drug Administration had been reluctant to restrict routine agricultural use of antibiotics. The F.D.A.’s principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, signaled a welcome change in direction recently, testifying on behalf of a new bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. It would allow veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics to treat individual animals or prevent disease, but it would sharply restrict the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals — the practice most closely associated with the development of drug-resistant pathogens.

The legislation is drawing strong opposition from the farm lobby since the restrictions would make it much harder for industrial farms to crowd thousands of animals together in confined, inhumane and unhealthy quarters. But the current practice is dangerously self-defeating: treating more and more animals with less and less effective drugs and in turn creating resistant strains of disease that persist in the soil and water. Congress should stop this now before an entire class of drugs becomes useless. Link

I sound like a broken record talking about antibiotic use on this blog, but we have a lot of educating to do on this issue. Trying to prevent livestock from getting sick is a basic and necessar animal husbandry skill. Trying to nurse livestock back to health after the fact will require the usage of not only more antibiotics, but more poserful ones as well. Please take the time to write a letter to the editor to the New York Times and tell them how this will affect the health of your livestock.

My Point of View

This weeks New York Time’s Op-Ed piece was once again targeting agriculture. Nicholas Kristof wrote the piece and suggested that President Elect Obama should rename the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Food. His main reasoning was that only 2% of the population is involved in agriculture compared to the 100% of the population that eats food.

In the piece, he suggests that farmers and ranchers, and more specifically agricultural organizations, are responsible for a host of problems including the diabetes and obesity epidemics in our country. The reason is that USDA only supports “industrial agriculture” and not the farmers who are growing “real food”.

He feels that by renaming the institution to the Department of Food, this will signal a change in philosophy that will put more emphasis on health, climate and humanitarian problems in the ag industry.

Maybe Kristof should consider a few things. First off, how amazing is it that it only requires 2% of our population to feed not just our country but millions of people around the world. In an incredibly efficient manner, American agriculture manages to keep the grocery story shelves filled and available at the lowest cost on the planet. While there were food riots occurring across the globe earlier this year, in this country you could walk into any grocery store inside our borders and fill your cart to your liking. Our production methods and efficiency are the envy of the world.

Next, Kristof was critical of our industry for using antibiotics and indoor systems for livestock. Any person who truly cares about animal husbandry will always do whatever they can to take the very best care of their animals. This includes giving them medication when appropriate. It also means that if animals are more comfortable and better protected living indoors, then that’s what we will do. Think of the livestock diseases that have popped up throughout the world in the last several years. Avian influenza and foot and mouth disease are two devastating diseases that have been suppressed in this country even when the experts said it was a matter of when, not if. That is due to the excellent health care and production methods that we employ.

Finally, we have the safest food supply in the world. While it may never be possible to eliminate all food-borne pathogens, we have come as close as any society in history. Even when many countries in the world live with the constant possibility of contaminated food, most of us never give that a second thought.

Agriculture is the backbone of any successful society. In the United States, we have redefined what a successful agriculture industry looks like. We are the envy of the world. And while Mr. Kristof works at putting up a new sign on the lawn at 1400 Independence Avenue, the American Farmer and Rancher will continue to feed the world.