The 2000s were go-go years for the microbe sector.
E. coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella and Listeria flourished in the food supply; S. aureus, S. pneumoniae and C. difficile gained footholds in hospitals and the community and Acinetobacter got all the way to Iraq where it threatened our troops.
But when the late Sen. Edward Kennedy introduced legislation to discourage the overuse of antibiotics (AB) responsible for life-threatening antibiotic resistance (AR) in humans 2007, it gained no traction.
"It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs," said the bill's background text. "These precious drugs aren't even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America."
Worse, when the FDA issued a directive in 2008 to ban non-therapeutic use of cephalosporin ABs in livestock--drugs also used in humans--to curtail resistance, irate lobbyists stormed Capitol Hill and the Bush administration backed down.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).