What the USDA Doesn't Want You to Know About Antibiotics and Factory Farms

from Mother Jones:



Here is a document the USDA doesn't want you to see. It's what the agency calls a "technical review"—nothing more than a USDA-contracted researcher's simple, blunt summary of recent academic findings on the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections and their link with factory animal farms. The topic is a serious one. A single antibiotic-resistant pathogen, MRSA—just one of many now circulating among Americans—now claims more lives each year than AIDS.

Back in June, the USDA put the review up on its National Agricultural Library website. Soon after, a Dow Jones story quoted a USDA official who declared it to be based on "reputed, scientific, peer-reviewed, and scholarly journals." She added that the report should not be seen as a "representation of the official position of USDA." That's fair enough—the review was designed to sum up the state of science on antibiotic resistance and factory farms, not the USDA's position on the matter.

But around the same time, the agency added an odd disclaimer to the top of the document: "This review has not been peer reviewed. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of Agriculture." And last Friday, the document (original link) vanished without comment from the agency's website. The only way to see the document now is through the above-linked cached version supplied to me by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

What gives? Why is the USDA suppressing a review that assembles research from "reputed, scientific, peer-reviewed, and scholarly journals"? ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/07/what-usda-doesnt-want-you-know-about-antibiotics-and-factory-farms

I feel sick.

Factory farms are brutal, inhumane and cruel. That they have to feed antibiotics to the animals to keep them alive enough to slaughter is disgusting. There is an outcry every time a puppy is abused or a kitten tossed in a dumpster, and I agree that is horrible but the SPCA and other agencies NEVER look at these barbaric chambers of torture called factory farms. And they really need to.

Of course disease is going to result from eating food produced in such an unhealthy environment. It is inevitable.

Thank goodness all the farms around me are still small family farms, not that the end result is much better. I abhor factory farming. Don't eat the stuff myself, not after reading about how they are treated and all the poison they create for the planet and all they are given. Nope, no meat for me ever ever again.

Dairy and eggs only when I know where they come from and know the animals are treated to a pretty wonderful life. I figure they get good food, outdoor accommodations when they want it, kind treatment and they have a job that does not hurt them. I know there are others who disagree and are vegan, something I work at with occasional dairy and eggs.

Each to their own. For myself this is the only way I can eat without crying. It is far too cruel for me to do otherwise.

The bigger the farm, the less attention the owners can pay to the quality of what is being grown or raised there.

The militant vegans point to studies like this as an argument to avoid meat, but even organic veggies grown on factory farms have made people sick recently.

I think the problem is scale. Smaller and more local and organic/free-range/grass-fed is better and healthier.