Asian Seafood Raised On Antibiotics And Pig Feces Approved For U.S Consumption

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Asian Seafood Raised on Antibiotics and Pig Feces Approved For U.S Consumption

I know most of the things we hear about farmed fish or seafood, in general, these days is far from positive but this is something…

I know most of the things we hear about farmed fish or seafood, in general, these days is far from positive but this is something we all need to know about. Have you ever wondered what some of these sea creatures are being fed on those ‘farms?’

A lot of the seafood we eat here in the United States comes from China and other Asian countries. The thing with seafood coming from China and so forth is that most of the sea creatures are fed using unconventional feed such as pig feces. While you might have heard this before chances are you didn’t get any proper explanation and so that is why this article is being brought forth. For quite a few years now this subject/situation has been making its rounds online, but most people don’t realize how true it actually is.

The idea that the fish we are eating was raised on things like pig feces is not something that sits well with anyone. Even back in 2012 Bloomberg Markets Magazine wrote on the topic and did verify that it was in fact happening and is a very common practice in some parts of Asia. They even went so far as to describe the sanitary conditions at fish factories in Vietnam as if flies are literally crawling all over baskets of shrimp constantly.

This is a bit stomach churning as Vietnam ships hundreds of thousands of shrimp to the US each year. To top that off the FDA doesn’t inspect all of the seafood we import, how could they? They only inspect about 2 percent of what we take in leaving a lot of bumps along the way. While you might think 2 percent is a lot when you look at places like Canada or the EU who inspect anywhere from 15-50 percent you can tell we are clearly behind in the times.

“Imported seafood may carry risks in terms of food safety because the FDA does not have the resources to proactively and regularly inspect foreign facilities, and it relies on product testing as a last resort,” said Love. To minimize the risks of seafood imports and to raise U.S. testing standards to match those of other countries, the authors recommend that the FDA budget be expanded to allow for more exhaustive testing and hiring of more inspectors.

Asia’s shrimp also relies on antibiotics big time when it comes to controlling diseases among them. This producing a risk of antibiotic-resistant pathogens being present in the final product. Back in 2008, Don Kraemer from the FDA at the time actually warned before Congress that there was clear scientific evidence that drug residues DO make it into the fish that we eat. While this might not be enough to make everyone check the source of their seafood I hope it puts the thought in the minds of at least some people.

For more information please feel free to check out the video below, it covers far more than you might ever imagine. What do you think about all of this? I for one think sanitation and overall conditions of the farms our food comes from should be more regulated somehow, perhaps in the future that will be more possible.

LINK

"The Pew Charitable Trusts": 26 antibiotics couldn’t stop this superbug

Antibiotic Resistance Project

Deadly Superbug Resisted All U.S. Antibiotics A Nevada woman recently died after contracting a superbug resistant to all 26 types of antibiotics available in the U.S. Her death underscores the urgency of finding new antibiotics to treat bacterial infections that are increasingly threatening to human life.  Innovation urgently needed »

Urge FDA:  Act on Antibiotic Use in Animals Let the Food and Drug Administration know you want to make sure that antibiotics are used only for appropriate reasons, for defined periods of time, and at effective dosages in farm animals. Submit your comment to the agency today—we've made it easy for you.  Make your voice heard »

Antibiotic Prescribing Trends Raise Concerns The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics has grown significantly since 2006, according to an analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today about half of all patients in hospitals receive antibiotics. We must do more to curb the use of these drugs and slow the spread of antibiotic resistance.  A worrisome trend »

Have You Seen Our Other Newsletters? Get our latest facts, maps, and findings on state policy, public health, and the health of our planet.  See what you're missing »

In the News

The Attack of the Superbugs Vocativ

Superbug E. coli, Resistant to Last-Resort Antibiotic, Show Up in China STAT

Using 'Brute Force' to Beat Antibiotic Resistance Healthline

These 12 Superbugs Pose the Greatest Threat to Human Health, WHO Says The Washington Post

L.A. County Patient Was Infected With Drug-Resistant E. coli Los Angeles Times

Limiting Antibiotics Curbs Deadly Hospital Infections The New York Times

Sign up for email updates from the Pew's Antibiotic Resistance Project.

Antibiotics are fundamental to modern medicine, essential for treating everything from routine skin infections to strep throat, and for protecting vulnerable patients receiving chemotherapy or being treated in intensive care units. Pew's antibiotic resistance project is working to ensure both the prudent use of existing drugs and a robust pipeline of new drugs in order to meet current and future patient needs. SaveAntibiotics.org

CounterCurrents: America's News Is Heavily Censored, Jeremy Corbyn's Leadership Victory A New Era For The 99%, Antibiotic Use Is Driving Antibiotic Resistance..

Dear Friend,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter herehttp://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm. You can also follow us on twitter, http://twitter.com/countercurrents and on Facebook,http://www.facebook.com/countercurrents

In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


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http://www.countercurrents.org/mcgrath180915.htm

Standard and Poor’s downgraded Japan’s sovereign debt rating on Wednesday from AA- to A+ due to growing concerns over the Japanese economy. It is the third such move by the global credit ratings agencies, following similar ones by Fitch in April and Moody’s in December. In the latest blow to Abe, his government announced last month that Japan’s economy had shrunk in the second quarter of 2015 by 1.6 percent on an annualized basis


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To understand why a Texas school would arrest a 14-year-old student for bringing in a homemade clock, it helps to understand what came before: the TV news hosts who declare Muslims "unusually barbaric," the politicians who gin up fear of Islam, the blockbuster film that depicts even Muslim children as dangerous threats, and the wave of hatred against Muslims that has culminated several times in violence so severe that what happened to Mohamed, while terrible, appears unsurprising and almost normal within the context of ever-worsening American Islamophobia


Jeremy Corbyn's Leadership Victory A New Era For The 99%
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http://www.countercurrents.org/esp180915.htm

The most important single consequence of Jeremy Corbyn's victory is that these issues - how can inequality be ended and austerity be defeated and, above all, what is socialism and how can it be achieved are now being discussed widely. A new generation is hearing about socialist ideas for the first time. This is a great step forward which must now be built on


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Iran is roaring and it is also logically explaining where it stands. It has both guts and big heart.I report that Iran is standing! And it will not succumb to vicious and senseless attacks. It will never kneel, because it knows – surrendering would lead directly to slavery


Morton Biskind: The Connecticut Physician Who Warned The World About DDT 
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http://www.countercurrents.org/piascik180915.htm

Though he was largely ignored and often reviled, Biskind continued to spread his message of warning. In 1950, he testified before Congress about the harmful effects of DDT, and in 1953, he published another important article, “Public Health Aspects of the New Insecticides,”in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases. Though resistance from powerful quarters continued, the message began to get through. More and more studies showed the destructive impact DDT spraying had on all forms of wildlife as well as direct links to cancer and other diseases in humans


America's News Is Heavily Censored 
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http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse180915.htm

Both mainstream, and ‘alternative news,' media are selling audiences to their advertisers. People who think that news-media are selling ‘news' instead of selling audiences (“eye-balls”), don't understand the news-business


Antibiotic Use Is Driving Antibiotic Resistance... 
By Shobha Shukla

http://www.countercurrents.org/shukla180915.htm

... So suggests the new data released today by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) via its ResistanceMap, an interactive online tool that allows users to track the latest global trends in drug resistance in 39 countries, and antibiotic use in 69 countries. CDDEP also issued the first-ever report on The State of the World's Antibiotics, 2015, that looks at the current state of global antibiotic use and documents alarming rates of bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics that can lead to life-threatening infections across the world


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http://www.countercurrents.org/qazi180915.htm

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PEW: Take Action: McDonald's Joins the Fight Against Superbugs

Join with PEW to thank McDonald's for protecting consumers:


Take Action: Thank McDonald's For Being a Leader in Preventing Antibiotic Overuse

Have you heard the good news? Last month, in an industry-changing move, McDonald’s USA announced that within two years it would serve only chicken raised without antibiotics important for human health.

Please join me in thanking the new McDonald’s CEO and ask him to expand the antibiotics policy to beef and pork next!

We have definitely reached a tipping point. Serving 27 million customers every day in its 14,000 U.S. restaurants, McDonald’s joins another fast-food leader, Chick-fil-A Inc., and producers such as Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, which have recently made commitments to sharply reduce antibiotic use in chicken.

This could not have happened without YOU! None of these restaurants or producers would have switched to chicken raised without antibiotic misuse had it not been for the constant pressure from consumers just like you.

Let’s make sure that McDonald’s doesn’t stop now. Ask the new CEO to serve only beef and pork that was raised without antibiotic overuse.

Thank you for your help. Together, we can save antibiotics.



LETTER

Kinda takes your breath away!

Wait, We Inject Antibiotics Into Organic Chicken Eggs?!

—By Tom Philpott

| Wed Jan. 15, 2014

 

Which came first: the organic chicken or the gentamicin injection? Sergey Yechikov/Shutterstock

 

When you've covered a topic long enough, you get the idea you've heard it all. Then along comes a factoid like the one I discovered while preparing my recent piece on the recent blockbuster Consumer Reports study on supermarket chicken and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I learned that at the industrial hatcheries that churn out chicks for the poultry industry, eggs are commonly injected with tiny amounts of an antibiotic called gentamicin, which is used in people to treat a variety of serious bacterial infections.

 

To sterilize the small hole required to get a vaccine into an egg, the industry commonly shoot in a bit of gentamicin.

 

That alone dropped my jaw—what, the practice of dosing chickens with antibiotics has to begin literally in the egg? But get this: The practice is allowed in organic production, too. Organic code forbids use of antibiotics in animals, yet in a loophole I'd never heard of, such standards kick in on "the second day of life" for chicks destined for organic poultry farms.

John Glisson, a veterinarian for the US Poultry & Egg Association, told me the practice originated decades ago, when the industry began vaccinating chicken embryos to prevent a common condition called Marek’s disease, a deadly herpes virus that attacks chickens. To sterilize the small hole required to get the vaccine into the egg, the industry would shoot in a bit of gentamicin. Glisson added that it remains a common practice, but that it has declined in recent years as the industry has begun to move away from reliance on antibiotics. Neither Glisson nor the FDA could give me precise data on how often it's used these days. The Food and Drug Administration allows such injections only when prescribed by a veterinarian, a spokesperson said.

So what's the problem with giving chicken a little antibiotic boost as it starts life? For starters, the practice could promote the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. A 2007 peer-reviewed study found of Maryland and Virginia workers in conventional chicken houses were 32 times more likely to carrying gentamicin-resistant E. coli than their neighbors who don't work in the industry.

 

And Robert Martin, director of food system policy at Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future, expressed skepticism that cleaning up after a vaccine is the only function of the practice. He said that while he was heading up the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Production back in 2007, he visited an industrial hatchery and witnessed the injections take place. "During the Commission study [completed in 2008], we learned that virtually every egg is injected with very small doses of gentamcin before they go in the incubator," he said. In addition to sterilizing the egg, he pointed to another possible benefit of the injections—that they "probably aid in rapid growth of the chick in the egg"—i.e., growth promotion, one of the reasons industrial-scale livestock producers have been relying on antibiotics for decades.

So why the loophole in organic? Bob Scowcroft, a veteran of organic-policy debates and now-retired founder of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, explained to me that back in 1990, when the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 was crafted, organic chicken production barely existed—and there were certainly no organic hatcheries. It never occurred to anyone to require that chicks come from special hatcheries, he said—such a rule would have crippled the industry from the start. "It was a chicken-and-egg thing," he quipped.

The "no antibiotics" label, on the other hand, actually means no antibiotics—even before the second day of life.

Since then, as the organic-chicken market has boomed, there seems to have been little push to change the second-day-of-life loophole. I contacted the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service about the mat. Congress would need to amend the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 to remove the exception.

That no one has tried to force it to strikes me as odd. In field crops, organic code requires farmers to use organically grown seeds "when commercially available." That provision has given rise to a still-small, but robust and growing, organic seed market. The rise of organic seeds is crucial to the future of organic farming, because plant strains adapted to heavy chemical use and monocrops don't always do well in diversified, low-input systems, as organic-seed expert Matthew Dillon never tires of pointing out. But until Congress adds a similar "when commercially available" requirement for organically raised chicks, it's hard to imagine an organic-hatchery sector developing.

Nevertheless, change does appear to be afoot in the industry. Poultry behemoth Perdue, most known for its conventional chicken, is also the nation's number-one organic chicken producer, through its Coleman Natural, Rosie, and Draper brands, company spokesperson Julie DeYoung told me. And those brands source their chicks from company-owned hatcheries that use no antibiotics, she said.

The reason has to do not with the organic label, but rather with another USDA-regulated label, the "raised without antibiotics" tag, which also adorn the Perdue organic brands. (In its conventional operations, DeYoung told me, Perdue has over the past five years removed antibiotics from 80 percent of its hatcheries.)


Back in 2008, the USDA determined that Perdue's rival chicken giant Tyson had been abusing that label by subjecting eggs on hatcheries to gentamycin injections. Since then, any chicken brandishing that label can't have ever been subjected to the controversial drug, not even in the egg. That is, "no antibiotics" means no antibiotics—even before the second day of life. So on this narrow point, the relatively new "no antibiotics" label has more teeth than the older and more formidable organic stamp.

Tom Philpott

Food and Ag Correspondent

Tom Philpott is the food and ag correspondent for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. RSS | Twitter

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http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/organic-chicken-and-egg-antibiotics-edition