Antibiotics | Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health

Europeans and Canadians Enjoy Antibiotic-Free Organic Apples and Pears, So Why Can’t We?

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 17:30:46 +0000

Americans may never taste an organic apple or pear that hasn’t been sprayed with antibiotics unless the NOSB sticks to its plan to forbid streptomycin on all organic fruits after October 2014. Action Alert!

Organic food should not contain synthetic substances, and most of it doesn’t—with the exception of apples and pears. Organic apple and pear trees are sprayed with streptomycin and oxytetracycline to prevent “fire blight,” so named because the tree appears to be burned. (We told you in March about the issue with oxytetracycline and other threats to organic standards.)

In 2011, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB, the decision-making body behind the federal organic standards), voted to prohibit antibiotics after October 2014. But growers have now petitioned NOSB for more time, so NOSB may delay the sunset date until 2016, unnecessarily exposing both orchards and consumers to streptomycin for at least two additional years.

Why should you be concerned about antibiotics in your fruit? We are facing an epidemic of disease-causing pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics. The New York Times sounded the alarm last week with an editorial about the report from the Centers for Disease Control that 23,000 Americans die every year from antibiotic-resistant infections, and two million are sickened. This is considered a very conservative estimate, which doesn’t include deaths for which the infection was just one contributing factor. The CDC’s director warned that unless the spread of antibiotic resistance can be reversed, “the medicine cabinet may be empty for patients with life-threatening infections.”

The CDC report mentioned antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB) as a “serious” concern, and we told you earlier this month about the epidemic of antibiotic-resistant TB ravaging Myanmar. Streptomycin is one of the drugs that treat TB—but if TB should mutate in ways that make it impossible for streptomycin to kill it, we would be edging closer to the frightening situation currently plaguing Myanmar. “We are getting closer and closer to the cliff,” said one CDC official.

The more that TB, or any bacterium, is exposed to an antibiotic, the greater the chance that it will eventually become ineffective on that bacterium. By spraying orchards with antibiotics year after year, disease-causing bacteria in those orchards are given numerous chances to mutate into forms that are impervious to the antibiotic. The antibiotics streptomycin and tetracycline have been used in organic apple and pear production since 1995.

There is also the issue of our gut flora when we consume the antibiotics. Studies show that good bacteria that are killed off by antibiotics may not ever return in their previous numbers. Given the importance of healthy gut flora in preventing numerous diseases, none of us can afford to have our gut flora compromised by unnecessary antibiotics.

We know it is possible for growers to produce organic apples and pears without antibiotics, because they do it for Canada and the European Union (EU), which forbid antibiotics in organic fruit. About twenty percent of the apple and pear orchards in Washington State, the nation’s leading producer of organic apples and pears, are antibiotic-free.

If the sunset date for antibiotics on organic fruit is extended, we can reasonably question whether the NOSB will ever put a stop to these drugs being sprayed on organic apples and pears. NOSB has recently changed its rules, making it much harder to remove a substance from the “approved” list for organic food. Removal will now require the approval of two-thirds of the members, as opposed to just a third. NOSB blatantly states that this is being done to benefit industry: to give farmers and processors “long-term stability.” They also state “it must be as difficult to remove a previously approved substance from the List as it was to add it in the first place.”

So unless we ensure that streptomycin is removed next year as planned, it may be much more challenging to remove from NOSB’s approved list in the future.

Action Alert! Tell the NOSB to stick with their plan to eliminate streptomycin from organic apples and pears in 2014. Comments for the fall 2013 NOSB meeting are due by Tuesday, October 1. Please send your message today!

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Big Farma Convinces FDA to Take a Dive

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:00:46 +0000

Just as everyone was making last-minute holiday preparations, the FDA quietly announced they would no longer try to restrict the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed. An Action Alert update!

The so-called “preventive” use of antibiotics in livestock is routine and widespread. Factory farms use them to ward off illness in animals that are kept in overcrowded, filthy living conditions that are a perfect environment for the spread of illness. These antibiotics also promote increased growth in animals.
In fact, 80% of all antibiotics sold in US go into farm animal feed. Germs resistant to one or more drugs kill 100,000 hospital patients every year in the US, which costs the healthcare system more than $34 billion.
In the last eighteen months, the World Health Organization issued a global alert on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant superbugs; antibiotic-resistant bacteria sickened people in three states; and a study found that up to half of US meat was contaminated with antibiotic-resistant staph. The agriculture industry stridently opposes legislative and regulatory attempts to curtail antibiotic usage, making the absurd claim that the science is still inconclusive.
For the past thirty-five years, the FDA has supposedly been trying to curtail the routine use of antibiotics. Odd that such a long-lived and concerted effort by such a powerful agency has failed so miserably, isn’t it? In 2008, the FDA issued an outright ban of the cephalosporin for livestock. But the agency withdrew the plan after strong opposition from industry groups that wanted to preserve some uses of the antibiotic.
On December 22 (probably hoping no one would notice in the holiday craziness), the FDA quietly withdrew its three-decade-old request to remove antibiotics from animal feed. “FDA believes that by implementing [a voluntary compliance] strategy, it will achieve its goal of promoting the judicious use of antimicrobial drugs in a more timely and resource-efficient manner than could be accomplished otherwise,” the agency said in its announcement. “FDA’s experience with contested, formal withdrawal proceedings is that the process can consume extensive periods of time and significant amounts of Agency resources” [emphasis ours].
In plain English, FDA is saying that industry opposition makes pursuing a ban too expensive. Big Ag is opposing something that probably every single American, if you stopped them on the street and asked them, would be in favor of—and the FDA is listening to industry rather than the hundreds of millions of Americans who want food that isn’t laden with hazardous antibiotics.
Happily, people did notice that FDA had bowed down to Big Farma, and immediately made a ruckus. So last week, to appease public outrage, FDA imposed new (but extremely slight) limitations on antibiotics that will barely make a dent in the real problem.
The new rule limits some uses of cephalosporin in some animals, banning routine injections into chicken eggs, and large or lengthy dosing in cattle and swine. This rule is much less strict than the ban proposed in 2008, since it still allows veterinarians to use “off-label” antibiotics, and it doesn’t address small-scale-production animals like ducks and rabbits. Nor does it cover the use of penicillin and tetracycline in feed and water when used for promoting the growth of animals or preventing illness that results from unsanitary living conditions—a practice that accounts for the majority of antibiotic use in agriculture. Why are they used so widely? Because unlike cephalosporin, these antibiotics do not require a veterinary prescription.
When asked about the lack of a guideline for the use of penicillin, FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael R. Taylor—who just happens to be a former Monsanto executive!—said, “We’re hopeful that in the coming months, we’ll be able to carry forward on that work.” In other words, “That’s not on our current agenda.”
The FDA drastically (and perhaps purposefully) underestimated the number of NDI submissions that will be required under their proposed draft guidance for dietary supplements. If they don’t have the manpower, funding, or scientific clout to do something as simple as standing up to industry pressure on antibiotics in animal feed, how are they going to evaluate thousands of NDI submissions? Talk about skewed priorities! They can’t (or won’t) stop this dangerous practice, but they’re happy to waste their limited resources—and our tax dollars—attacking supplements
We say it all the time, but it bears continued repeating: Supplements aren’t killing people. Drug-resistant bacteria are.
HR 965, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, now has 74 co-sponsors, but the bill has been stalled in the Health subcommittee since March of last year. Please write to your representative and senators today about FDA’s inability or unwillingness to take substantive action, and ask them to take action on this important bill right away! Please take action today!

Click the link above to go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.

We’d also love to hear your comments about this article—just add your thoughts below—but remember that the messages below are only seen by our ANH-USA readers and not Congress, the FDA, etc.

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New Studies Turn the Tables on What’s Safe—and What’s Not

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:00:08 +0000

FDA finds higher levels of arsenic in chicken than previously thought; latest report says supplements are safe; and NIH abandons niacin study.

The Arsenic Deception

Last June, we reported that the chickens you buy at the grocery store are given feed which often includes arsenic, the deadly poison and known carcinogen, added to make them gain weight faster. The Center for Food Safety and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy petitioned the FDA to ban arsenic in animal feed. Of course, the FDA listened to big chicken producers and the arsenic additive producer Pfizer, and no action was taken.

Now the FDA admits that some chicken meat may contain “small amounts” of arsenic. Previous studies have indicated that the arsenic was eliminated with chicken waste.

The FDA said in a press release that the inorganic arsenic “does not pose a health risk.” But Pfizer has decided voluntarily to suspend the sale of Roxarsone (the arsenic additive) in 30 days, and will “facilitate an orderly process for suspending use of the product” in the US. Sounds like a backroom deal with the FDA protecting Pfizer from liability while the company exits the arsenic feed business.

By the way, as we reported to you earlier, this is the company that pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest healthcare fraud in US history and received the largest criminal penalty ever levied for illegal marketing of four of its drugs. But even that was only a slap on the wrist. If the US government prosecuted fully and won a conviction, by law Medicare could no longer buy from the company, so major drug companies are effectively exempt from serious criminal penalties.

Earlier this year, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, or PAMTA—essentially an anti-antibiotics in animal feed bill. And just yesterday, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) introduced a nearly identical bill in the Senate. S.1211 has three co-sponsors, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). This is the first time such a bill has been introduced in the Senate; Congresswoman Slaughter introduced the bill in the House in the past few Congresses.

Supplements are Safe, Latest Report Confirms

The latest 200-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows no deaths whatsoever in 2009 from any dietary supplement, amino acid, herb, vitamin, or dietary mineral supplement.

As a press release from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service puts it,

Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 155,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of nearly 57 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.

If nutritional supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,” as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. 2009 is just the latest of a long string of Poison Center reports showing the general safety of supplements, especially compared to drugs.

NIH Abandons Niacin Study

The National Institutes of Health has stopped a clinical trial on an extended-release form of niacin for cholesterol treatment eighteen months earlier than planned, claiming that niacin did not reduce the risk of cardiovascular events (that is, heart attacks) in patients taking statin drugs, though it did increase levels of HDL, the “good” cholesterol, and drop the levels of risky triglycerides.

Some might interpret the axing of the NIH’s niacin trial as an indication that niacin doesn’t work. Far from it. In fact, there isn’t a drug on the market that comes so close to offering the “Holy Grail” of simultaneously reducing both LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides, while also raising HDL.

The problem with this trial is that cholesterol levels were already low because patients were taking a statin drug (Zocor) made by Merck. So the only real finding in the study was that the extended-release niacin drug Niaspan from Abbott Laboratories, while shown to increase HDL and lower triglycerides, didn’t have any effect on reducing heart attack rates. How different the results might have been if the patients hadn’t been on orthodox medicine’s standard offering of statins, the default choice for anyone with moderate to high cholesterol!

There are likely to be some drug companies that are worried about giving a simple, non-patentable vitamin (in this case niacin, or vitamin B3) too much positive publicity when they can’t make any money from it.

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The European E. Coli Outbreak: The Real Story

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:00:34 +0000

Hint: It’s not about organic food.

When people began to die from E. coli poisoning in Europe, the first thing we heard was that organic cucumbers were to blame, or if not, that organic tomatoes or lettuce were. There wasn’t a shred of evidence for this, but the Internet began to fill up with people swearing off organic food!
Then the accusation shifted: it was German organic sprouts that were the culprit. Tests of the sprouts on the farm were negative. Well, so-called forensic evidence—in particular, the location of the infections—pointed toward the sprouts, so in the end they got the blame.
It could indeed be the sprouts. They are grown in a wet, warm environment, which would be conducive to bacterial overgrowth. But let’s be clear: no organic fertilizer (manure) was used, so that was not the source of contamination.
Since there was no manure, how could the sprouts have become infected? Did the workers not wash their hands? This isn’t likely to be it. Why? Because this was a new, mutant form of E. coli. Not only new and mutant—it was also resistant to antibiotics. A new, mutant, and resistant killer strain isn’t likely to come just from dirty hands.
Then where from? Most likely the seeds. And where would seeds pick up a new, mutant, and antibiotic-resistant strain? It could be from farms where antibiotics are overused—not an organic farm. Readers may recall last year’s Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D–NY), the only microbiologist in Congress, which was supported by organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Food Safety. The bill, HR 965, has been reintroduced in the current session of Congress and now has 59 co-sponsors. It would ban the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials in animals, and would ban the use of even therapeutic antimicrobials unless it can be demonstrated that there is “a reasonable certainty of no harm to human health” due to the development of antibiotic drug resistance. We have a new Action Alert on this new bill.
The outbreak could also be related to the use of E. coli in creating new GMO strains: the E. coli bacterium is used by scientists to carry new genes into the organism. In the process, a new form of E. coli could have been created. If this happened (and of course, no one will ever know), it would be more than ironic to blame it on organic agriculture, which struggles to stay free from GMO contamination.
There is neither evidence nor reason to believe that organic agriculture produces a greater threat of E. coli contamination than conventional agriculture. This is especially true because contamination is associated with huge, industrial farms, and those farms are not generally organic.
If the first thing we heard about this outbreak was that it was an organic food problem, the second thing we heard was that it was time to start nuking our fresh produce. The FDA gave its blessing to irradiate raw spinach and lettuce three years ago, claiming that it was safe and had no effect on nutrients. This was in addition to prior approval by the FDA or USDA to nuke almonds, spices, imported produce and fruit, and especially meat—not surprisingly, much of the nuked meat ends up in children’s school lunch program. The Grocery Manufacturers Association wants more items approved for nuking, but also finds consumers reluctant to accept nuked products.
The consumer reaction is, of course, just common sense. The human race didn’t make it this far by eating irradiated food. To assume such food is safe and nutritious is just folly, no matter how convenient it might be for a beleaguered bureaucrat looking for some quick fix. There is a fix, but it isn’t in nuking. It lies in a totally different direction.
The massive Food Safety Act just passed by Congress requires the FDA to come up with new regulations to prevent E. coli and similar outbreaks. This is mostly a charade because no government agency has the slightest idea what to do about it other than nuke our food. As we at ANH-USA have noted before, the Food Safety Bill might have been written by the giant food industry, because it doesn’t do anything about industrial farming methods, the heart of the problem, and instead threatens the very existence of small farmers, including small organic farmers.
Is there a way to make food safer? Yes. Make CAFOs clean up their act and stop destroying small, independent agriculture. And support Rep. Slaughter’s bill to ban the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals!

TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

Click THIS LINK to go to the Action Alert page. Once there, fill out the form with your name and address, etc., and customize your letter. We have a suggested message for you, but please feel free to add your own comments to the letter.
We’d also love to hear your comments about this article—just add your thoughts below—but remember that the messages below are only seen by our ANH-USA readers and not Congress.

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Food Safety and the FDA

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0000

According to the editors of Scientific American in the April 2009 issue, “the security of our food supply is at risk—in ways more noxious than anyone had feared.” The article referred to the FDA’s action in 2008 regarding the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animal production.

A commission of high-profile scientists, farmers, doctors, and vets in April 2008 recommended that the FDA phase out antibiotics in farm animals used non-therapeutically. Just 5 days before the ban was set to take effect, the FDA reversed its position. According to Scientific American, the farm lobby is thought to have played a role in the FDA’s action. Stuart Levy, MD, Tufts University educator and president of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, has worked tirelessly to educate physicians and consumers that antibiotics have risks as well as benefits, and that the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in farm animals has adverse consequences on human health.

As integrative physicians have proved in their clinical practices for decades, a patient’s diet can affect how genes express themselves. Nutrition can be used preventively as well as therapeutically—or, in the words of Scientific American, “As the world is quickly learning, a civilization can only be as healthy as its food supply.”

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FDA Reverses Its Order on Antibiotics in Animals

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:58:49 +0000

In July 2005, the FDA banned the use of an animal antibiotic called Baytril, citing a threat to human health. Baytril, used to treat infections in chickens and turkeys, had caused some strains of bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics, both in animals and in humans. Baytril is closely related chemically to antibiotics used in humans such as Cipro. According to NPR, this was the first time the FDA acted to withdraw an animal drug to prevent drug-resistance problems in humans.
In December 2007, a coalition of consumer, environmental, science, and humane groups known as Keep Antibiotics Working wrote to the FDA commissioner, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, urging further FDA action. Their letter presented evidence that the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock contributed to the MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) epidemic in Europe, and showed that the effectiveness of antibiotics against deadly bacteria was questionable at best. They cited data that a new strain of MRSA bacteria in pigs was linked to 20% of all human MRSA infections in the Netherlands and Canada, though there are insufficient studies to make that link in the U.S., where MRSA cases have recently surged. The coalition also estimated that 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are used as feed additives in chicken, pigs, and cattle.
This past summer the FDA instituted an order banning the off-label use of drugs in food-producing animals, while noting that the same family of drugs was important to treat disease in humans. This fall, the FDA echoed again the same sentiment, taking note of the increasing evidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in cattle. But the FDA’s action met with harsh industry criticism. Pfizer argued that the drugs were essential for preventing disease in animals. Other groups, including the Animal Population Health Institute, the KS Health Department, the National Turkey Federation, and the American Veterinary Medical Association, also criticized the FDA’s ban, which was to go into effect on November 30.
So despite the mounting concern over antibiotic resistance—which is known to endanger human life—on November 25 the FDA revoked their earlier order, to the profound dismay of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition and researchers like Dr. Stuart Levy at Tufts University, who leads the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics. Dr. Levy has collected a considerable body of evidence to educate his colleagues and consumers about the dangers of the overuse and abuse of antibiotics both in humans and in animal use.
This action and others like it are important reasons to reform the FDA. AAHF has a program in concert with numerous other organizations to create a new and better FDA called ReformFDA.org. Visit www.reformfda.org to sign the petition and learn more information.

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