Dear Secretary Vilsack,
I'd like to thank you for tackling some very tough questions from audience members at last Wednesday's The Future of Food conference in Washington, DC. Your passion and commitment for farmers and rural communities is moving and greatly appreciated. I must admit, however, I am extremely disappointed with your response to my question about antibiotic use in food animals. I asked, when will the government do something to stop producers from squandering 70% of our antibiotics on healthy farm animals? You answered with the question, "How do you basically legislate that?"
Almost everyone in the audience knew the answer. Spontaneously, like a Greek chorus, dozens of voices yelled out, "regulate it!" How else are we going to save our antibiotics for what they were first intended? Without antibiotics modern medicine could literally be taken back to the days when a simple childhood ear infection lead to permanent hearing loss and worse cases death.
Mr. Secretary, knowing your passion to help the people who live in rural communities, there is no larger issue to focus your attention on than protecting them from antibiotic-resistant bacteria sourced from food animals. Public health experts warn farm workers and the people who live near these factory farms face a greater risk of farm-acquired antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections than the general public.
I understand that the USDA's stance, as you stated, is to encourage farmers to use antibiotics "judiciously." With all due respect, our current predicament is proof that "voluntary" measures don't work and now there is no time left to ask industrial producers nicely to stop wasting our antibiotics. We must act now. While regulating antibiotics may fall under the Food and Drug Administration's jurisdiction, as the Secretary of Agriculture, I hope you take the time to find ways to support the FDA in "regulating" this gross misuse of modern medicine's most precious resource. You may also want to consider standing behind the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the only microbiologist in Congress, recently reintroduced the bill, which calls for the end of using medically important antibiotics on healthy food animals.
Follow Laurie David on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Laurie_David
the USDA needs the equivalent of an NIH wing of complimentary and alternative medicine; namely a organic wing which promotes organic and sustainable farming [ green ] rather than trying to kill it along with americans health
USDA should like HHS not be a marketing agency it should be a health and sustainability agency..the EPA should take a closer look at it....HHS doesnt push drugs only does it ?
http://www.panna.org/
http://www.bangmfood.org/
President Obama is a sucker for big companies, for the status quo,although he is for change and doesnt like brutal capitalism . he also is soft on science that is he assumes science is only benighn or saintly and it clearly is also devilish and polluting
editors of the food and green sections should know more about organic agriculture FAO in a conference concluded that organic is superior in every way [ including meeting the increasing population food demand] to commercial modern chemical agribizz
organic agriculture is also the biggest carbon sink and increases in fertility while monoculture " farm " soil fertility decreases ~15% p.a.
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Back in December of 1996, Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson, were hired by FOX as a part of the Fox “Investigators” team at WTVT in Tampa Bay, Florida. In 1997 the team began work on a story about bovine growth hormone (BGH), a controversial substance manufactured by Monsanto Corporation. The couple produced a four-part series revealing that there were many health risks related to BGH and that Florida supermarket chains did little to avoid selling milk from cows treated with the hormone, despite assuring customers otherwise.
According to Akre and Wilson, the station was initially very excited about the series. But within a week, Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to use statements from Monsanto representatives that the reporters knew were false and to make other revisions to the story that were in direct conflict with the facts. Fox editors then tried to force Akre and Wilson to continue to produce the distorted story. When they refused and threatened to report Fox’s actions to the FCC, they were both fired.(Project Censored #12 1997)...read more here: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/
And those drug-resistant e.coli in the burgers...that didn't happen?
And feeding the majority of antibiotics used in the U.S. to feedlot animals isn't misuse that breeds more antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
Maybe farm and sewage workers are not at risk, but your kid could get an under-cooked burger any time.
But seriously, why the quibbles? Feedlots get far too much favorable treatment, not just in permitting them to use human drugs, but in things like letting them release untreated sewage into the surrounding environment. Never mind that agricultural subsidies to the feed make feedlots possible, or that the meat damages our health (plants do not add cholesterol to your diet), or that feedlots are polluting messes that continue to be under-regulated, this issue is far from "overblown," because most meat still comes from these destructive places.
Compare the agriculture results both production wise and health wise to 100, 50, even 25 years ago. The amount of contaminated food reports have declined drastically while the amount of human food produced per unit resource is at an all time high. Could we do better? We will have to in order feed the unmanaged, unplanned-for and unsustainable growth of the human population - while we reach the end of peak oil and phosphate based fertilizers that provide 95% of global human food.
The FACT is this denied me a RIGHT to a Jury Trial on this civil matter, which is a Bill of Rights issue, BUT DENIED ME AND THE PUBLIC THE RIGHT TO THE INFORMATION to stop this acticity and I lost my farm and never was compensated. WHAT ABOUT OUR NATURAL RIGHTS?
I would be happy to provide a copy of said suit for review to the public! It is a public document. Just ask for the Case Number.
WE HAVE MANY ISSUES IN OUR COUNTRY AND UNLESS WE JOIN TOGETHER AND DEMAND JUSTICE, IT WILL CONTINUE, IF YOU DO NOT CARE,THEN DO NOT EXPECT OTHERS TO CARE WHEN YOUR TIME COMES TO BE DENIED BASIC JUSTICE!!!
* Dolores Mertz, a recently retired legislator who championed a factory farm agendain the House and whose two sons own factory farms and have been busted in the past for environmental violations;
* Gene VerSteege, a corporate livestock producer and past president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association;
* Brent Rastetter, a big-moneyed Branstad campaign donor and construction company owner that builds factory farms (Brent’s brother Bruce was Branstad’s top campaign donor who used to run Heartland Pork); and
* Mary Boote, an industry insider with close connections to the Farm Bureau, and executive director of an organization that relies on corporate ag to pay her bills.
These are the people he put in charge...aka foxes guarding the henhouse.
Point being - everyone wants cheap food, but no one wants to or can grow it as efficiently as factory farms. Sorry, there just isn't a well founded argument that supports anything else. The problem is that these factory farms aren't necessarily well or scientifically managed - any more than slumlords are. The range of conditions on factory farms is just as variable as a penthouses are to slums. We need to make farms as efficient as possible - that means environmentally, sanitary, and economically as possible. Which means owners and inspectors have to accountable and proportionately liable for damages. While there are multiple problems at play here - there is one common element - it's how much waste the farm produces and how much of that waste is optimally recycled. Theoretically there should be little or no waste leaving a farm if it is properly planned and that plan implemented and managed optimally.
I have given up all meat and am considering giving up dairy, because of the hormones given to our cows.
The public is being sacrificed...is this the American way?
No one's forcing you to buy their products, its not that hard to use the internet to research. I'll take my chances.
1.GMOs aren't labeled so we don't know what's in the food we are eating.
2. GMOs irreversibly contaminate organic or naturally grown foods. For instance you cannot be sure that any corn, even organic, doesn't contain some GMOs. Monsanto is harassing and prosecuting organic farmers for being the victim of Monsanto's own contamination of their crops.
These foods are being forced on us with Gov.. policies.