Actually, agribusiness' use of ABS increased by 13 percent from 2006 to 2007 according to the AHI--to offset "high grain prices" and "capture both the economic efficiencies and the health benefits derived from the use of these products." Those "efficiencies" included ten million pounds of tetracycline fed to livestock in one year.
In addition to worrying about Rep. Slaughter, agribusiness worries about the public health bent FDA is taking under its new directors, Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, a former New York City health commissioner and Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, MD, the number two officer and a former food safety staffer for Rep. Henry Waxman (D. CA). Especially since Sharfstein announced FDA's support of PAMTA at a House Rules Committee on the legislation in June, without even briefing agribusiness.
"You deliberately tried to blindside some of us on this committee, and we don't appreciate that," said Rep. Leonard Boswell (Dem. IA) to the FDA's new senior adviser on food safety, Michael Taylor after determining that Sharfstein's remarks had White House Office of Management and Budget seal of approval. Boswell, who was chairman of the House agriculture subcommittee on livestock last year, was the only pro-AB voice at the PAMTA rules hearings.
ABs are popular with Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and lucrative for agribusiness for two simple reasons: Less Space and Less Feed.
Raising turkeys without ABs "would result in a decrease in density or an increase in the amount of land needed to raise the additional turkeys needed to meet the consumer demand," said National Turkey Federation's Michael Rybolt at the 2008 cephalosporin hearings, admitting ABs enables crowding. It would create greater feed needs, "an increase in manure" and tie up more land for crop production said Rybolt.
While ABs do squeeze more nutrients out of feed by killing gut bacteria, causing "growth" say scientists, a Johns Hopkins University study in Public Health Reports in 2007 found their cost cancelled out profits for chicken farmers.
Evidence of AR infections--urinary tract, intestinal, upper and lower respiratory, ear, skin, even TB and STDs--is not hard to find in hospital and community. In fact, MRSA was reported plentiful on Florida swimming beaches at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in 2009.
ABMs are also found in ground water, soil, and in crops and workers near manure lagoons and industrial farms and are in many of the foods we eat. Consumer Reports found over 60 percent of microbes detected in chickens from 22 states were resistant and an FDA inspection found cephalosporin directly injected directly into eggs at a US hatchery. Bon Appetit.
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