Antibiotics, veterinary drugs and coded antibiotic resistance were barely mentioned at the hearings -- nor was the practice of harvesting wild fish to feed farmed fish (though one invited speaker actually promoted the practice.)
In fact there was only one meltdown in the FDA's otherwise confident presentation and it concerned ABT's allergy study whose, "technical flaws... so limit its interpretation that we can not rely on its results," says the FDA report.
When FDA food scientists Kathleen Jones and Kevin Greenlees presented the allergy research, which sought to establish safety levels with no number that would be unsafe, the advisory committee pounced.
"It's as if you selected an allergen in goat meat and one in sheep meat and compare the two and found a difference," said Louisiana State University's David F. Senior, who chaired the committee. "Who cares?"
"These studies are a bust," said another committee member, asking why they were not conducted again.
"I am not a statistician and she is not here today," retreated Jones, adding that the studies were absolutely "above board," though no one had suggested they weren't.
"You've reached the limit of my statistical" knowledge said Larisa Rudenko.
And when James D. McKean with the Department of Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine at Iowa State University asked why a category of salmon suddenly was dropped from a table as a lone, extra salmon seemed to appear out of nowhere, FDA's Greenlees said, "It's my fault" and "I apologize."
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