Agriculture: Plant perennials to save Africa's soils

Former FDA commissioner is among 150 scientists and 50 farmers calling on Congress to regulate antibiotic use.

The overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture and medicine is putting human lives at unnecessary risk and driving up medical costs, according to a group of group of 150 scientists that includes a former head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Along with 50 US farmers and ranchers who have opted out of using non-therapeutic antibiotics in their animal feed, the scientists are calling on the FDA and Congress to work together to regulate unnecessary use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

In twin statements released on Wednesday, the scientists and farmers said that a growing body of research supported the conclusion that overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is fueling a health crisis. One statement cited a study which estimated that antibiotic-resistant infections cost $20bn annually to hospitals alone.

Donald Kennedy, former FDA commissioner and president emeritus at Stanford University, said: "There's no question that routinely administering non-therapeutic doses of antibiotics to food animals contributes to antibiotic resistance."

Kennedy said the FDA's current voluntary approach, which asks the animal drug industry to stop selling antibiotics medically important to human disease as growth promoters in animal feed, was not enough. Kennedy, who was also former editor-in-chief of Science magazine for eight years, said: "Unless it reaches the industry as a regulatory requirement it will not be taken seriously."

Three decades after the FDA determined that growth-promoting uses of penicillin and tetracycline in agriculture were threatening human health, its own data shows that 80% of all antimicrobial drugs sold nationally are used in animal agriculture.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic Representative for New York who is a microbiologist, joined the scientists and others in calling for regulation of animal agriculture's use of non-therapeutic antibiotics. At a press conference organised by the Union of Concerned Scientists to launch the statement, she compared agriculture's use of antibiotics in animal feed to mothers sprinkling them on their children's cereal every morning.

Antibiotic-resistant diseases now kill more Americans than HIV/Aids, Slaughter said. "Every year, more than 100,000 Americans die from bacterial infections acquired in hospitals, and seventy percent of these infections are resistant to drugs commonly used to treat them. This abuse and overuse must stop."

The scientists said that while the medical community had "stepped up to the plate" by educating doctors and reducing prescriptions, the agriculture industry was lagging behind.

They said that while the principle linking antibiotic resistance and non-therapeutic uses of antibiotics was widely accepted, antibiotics are still routinely added in massive quantities to animal feed, not to treat disease but to promote faster growth and to stave off diseases caused by poor diets and raising animals in overcrowded unsanitary living conditions.

Russ Kremer, a Missouri hog farmer who caught a blood disease after being gored in the knee by one of his pigs, said his doctor told him he had the same antibiotic resistance as his pigs. His infection was resistant to six out of seven antibiotics used to treat it, Kremer said.

Kremer said he changed his practice when he found out the feed was responsible. He said he went from having sick pigs to healthy ones. "I exterminated my herd, brought in wholesome feedstuff without antibiotics. In the last 23 years my pigs have been drug free, they have less than 1% mortality and I've saved $16,000."

Asked why the agricultural industry, farmers and ranchers were so resistant to removing the antibiotics, Kramer said: "We were given information that suggested antibiotics in feed was more efficient in keeping down instances of disease. We got caught up in that as if it was a routine feed. There is a mindset that believes if you remove antibiotics their product will deteriorate and profits will go down."

Animal feed that did not contain antibiotics was still not widely available, he said.

Kremer is among 50 farmers and ranchers who produce meat without using non-therapeutic antibiotics and who signed a second statement in support of the scientists.

Food poisoning caused by salmonella and campylobacter have been most strongly linked to non-therapeutic use of antibiotics, but other antibiotic resistant E.coli infections and methicillin‐resistant staphylococcus aureus infections have also been linked to the problem, according to the scientists.

Original Article Here

Common sense reasons to support organic agriculture

Sasha Lyutse’s Blog

Everyone loves a good [rhetorical] food fight. This week, a ruckus erupted over a Stanford University study, which found that organic foods are no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts. With headlines like "Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce", consumers were presumably left to conclude that buying organic was pointless at best and a waste of money at worst.

Perhaps this made for good headlines, but it makes for terrible common sense.

Lots of voices sprang up to defend organic agriculture. I won’t rehash all the arguments, but you can check out a great compilation here.

Put simply, the focus on health advantages in nutrient density terms largely misses the point. While more study is certainly needed on the relative antioxidant and nutritional profiles of organic vs. conventional foods, the biggest difference between the two is in how they are produced—and that is intimately tied with their impacts on our health. (As the study itself concluded, organic food is far less likely to be contaminated with pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But more on that in just a bit).

It’s easy to be confused about what exactly separates organically produced food from its conventional analogue. So here’s the scoop. The USDA’s organic standards center around a list of approved and prohibited inputs for organic production, which means that organic foods must be produced without the use of:

antibiotics

artificial growth hormones

high fructose corn syrup

artificial dyes (made from coal tar and petrochemicals)

artificial sweeteners

synthetically created chemical pesticide and fertilizers

genetically engineered proteins and ingredients

sewage sludge

irradiation

I don’t know about you, but I consider my exposure to pesticide residues and “superbugs” (antibiotic-resistant bacteria that breed within our dominant conventional livestock production system) to be pretty important to my health, not to mention the health of farmworkers. But on both counts the study’s authors offered this anemic conclusion: “Consumption of organic foods may reduce exposure to pesticide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

Let’s start with a basic finding that the paper then minimizes. Organic fruits and vegetables are far less likely to be contaminated with pesticide residues. This is significant even before you consider the differences in the extent of the contamination.

Tom Philpott and Dr. Charles (Chuck) Benbrook do a fantastic job of breaking down and critiquing the Stanford report’s treatment of pesticides. Benbrook has served a lifetime as an agriculture expert, including as the Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues. Philpott is an independent investigative journalist and cofounder of a non-profit center for sustainable food education. As they both point out, conventional produce is much more likely to be contaminated with multiple pesticides, more toxic pesticides, and at higher levels. The paper minimizes this difference because the pesticide residue levels are below EPA’s maximum allowed limits. But as they both note, the “cocktail effect” of the chemical mixtures is not taken into account by the EPA in setting the limits.

Most notably, Philpott and Benbrook point out the authors’ omission of the body of science focused on pre-natal and children’s exposures to highly toxic organophosphate pesticides, which are so dangerous to children’s health that they are no longer legal for use in homes or on residential lawns. NRDC has been working to ban them from agriculture because of the high number of human poisonings they cause each year, as well as their link to learning deficits in children exposed prenatally as a result of pregnant mothers being exposed.

Their conclusion? That the Stanford researchers dismissed statistically significant differences in the severity of pesticide contamination between conventional and organic food.

Likewise, the authors focus on the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on organic vs. conventional meats, missing the much larger public health crisis caused by an increase in antibiotic-resistant infections and conventional animal agriculture’s significant contribution to this pool of resistance.

In conventional factory farms, massive quantities of antibiotics are fed routinely at low levels to chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we eat, to speed animal growth and compensate for filthy—and avoidable—conditions. This constant, low-level dosing of animals creates a dangerous breeding ground for “superbugs”, which escape in soil, air, and water that comes into contact with animal waste. Animal waste is allowed to be used as biosolid fertilizer on conventional (but not organic) produce where the superbugs make their way onto our vegetables and fish.

These “superbugs” can not only be found on the meat in our grocery stores, but antibiotic-resistant bacteria can swap resistance genes with each other, spreading resistance, including transfers from harmless bacteria to pathogenic bacteria. Multi-drug resistant infections, such as the life-threatening disease MRSA, are on the rise while the development of new antibiotics is coming to a standstill. Antibiotic use in livestock is part of the problem.

The Stanford report appears to downplay the connection between the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in conventional livestock production and the rise of superbugs, concluding that farm use of antibiotics “may be related” to the problem of antibiotic resistance. But as my colleague Avi discussed here, there’s now a significant body of science that establishes that the use of antibiotics on livestock operations (and not just human use of antibiotics) contributes to the problem of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control has said that there is “strong scientific evidence of a link between antibiotic use in food animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.” The American Medical Association agrees:

“Antibiotics are one of the most useful and important medical advances in recent history. Their effectiveness, however, is being compromised by bacterial resistance, arising in part from excessive use of antibiotics in animal agriculture.”

Organic meat producers, on the other hand, are not allowed to use antibiotics and so do not contribute to this problem. Instead of dosing their animals with drugs to prevent them from getting sick in unsanitary environments, these farmers find better ways of managing their flocks and preventing illness—for example, using better feed and cleaner housing.

Last, but certainly not least, it is the substantial environmental benefits that organic farming brings, from better management of soils to reduced fertilizer runoff into watersheds, that represent a key reason to support it. An analysis of the lifecycle impacts of conventional agriculture—from the pesticides discussed above, to nitrogen fertilizer and chemical herbicides—on farmworkers and surrounding communities, and on our soils, watersheds, air, and biodiversity shows that organic practices are better for our health, animal health, and environmental protection compared with conventional farming.

Let’s not confuse media buzz and sensational headlines with reality. Supporting organic agriculture for our health and the health of our environment is just common sense. For more information, check out some of these great posts on NRDC’s work to curb the use of toxic pesticides and non-therapeutic antibiotics in agriculture.

Original Article Here

Organic Farming Criticism

Written by Maria Trimarchi

There are mixed feelings from conventional farmers and the agricultural industry about organic farming. Many in the industry are not convinced organic foods are more nutritious or that organic methods trump scientific advances, citing for example that farming with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to help lessen world hunger outweighs any potential environmental risk.

Restricted use of antibiotics in organic farming has led to concern about high levels ofmicrobes in manure, in turn causing food poisoning such asE. coli. There is a lack of sufficient evidence to prove organics suffer from a higher than conventional level of microbes, but right now studies favor organic products. The Soil Association suggests the handling of manures on organic farms are actually more likely to reduce levels of organisms, and that less than 5 percent of food poisoning outbreaks are due to fruit and vegetable contamination. Research continues to be conducted on the use of organic waste in all types of farming.

Additionally, a report in 2002 suggests organic and free-range chickens might be more likely to have Campylobacter infections, a known cause of food poisoning. Subsequent studies are underway.

Even as organic farming methods work to protect the environment by building healthy soils and emphasizing natural systems, without proper management and knowledge, organic practices can create pathogen problems.

The environmental benefits of organic farming are a hotly debated topic, and researchers continue to study how sustainable methods may help cure -- or at least help negate -- some of the effects of any environmental hazards produced by the modern-day agricultural system, hopefully reducing levels of chemicals put into the soil and atmosphere and our bodies. Conventional wisdom follows that the more we understand about our food sources and how they affect our bodies and the environment, the better.

Original Article Here

Biosecurity is Key to Antibiotic–Free Turkey Production

Tips on rearing turkeys without the routine use of antibiotics were offered by William Alexander, speaking at a recent turkey conference in the UK. Key to success lies in prevention of diseases, rather than cure, reports senior editor, Jackie Linden.

“There are many stressors involved in turkey production,” said William Alexander of Hybrid Turkeys in Canada, “and our aim is to reduce them.” He was speaking at the 6th Turkey Science and Production Conference in Macclesfield in March 2012.

Biosecurity: The Best Defence

The best means of offence against diseases is defence, he said, referring to beetles, flies, rodents, wild birds and people. He stressed the need to form and implement a biosecurity programme and to modify it, if necessary. For effective rodent control, it is important that the bait is fresh.

He also stressed the need to wash and disinfect poultry houses thoroughly between flocks, paying particular attention to the feed pans.

For farm visitors, there should be a protocol, and boot dips need to be kept free of organic material and kept fresh.

The flock should be checked at least twice a day if they are healthy and up to four times a day in case of disease outbreaks so that any dead birds are removed quickly. Mr Alexander recommended that special protective clothing and boots are worn for this procedure to prevent the spread of any undiagnosed disease to other houses.

Water Sanitation: Key for Flock Health

Water sanitation is vital, he said, recommending a peroxide cleaner is used as soon as the house is depopulated in order to remove any biofilm that may have built up in the water system, and then repeating the process 24 to 48 hours before restocking the house.

Drinker line sanitation is most commonly achieved using chlorine. The pH of the water should be between 5.5 and 6.5 for the chlorine to be effective and so pH should be checked to see if an acidifier is required, said Mr Alexander. A good way to measure the effectiveness of an oxidising sanitiser is by measuring Oxidative Reductive Potential (ORP), which should exceed 700 to 750mV. He recommended weekly checks, at the front of the line and at the end. Chlorine dioxide is another good sanitiser but the ORP is not a suitable test for its efficacy, he said.

Developing a Healthy Gut

Mr Alexander said he values regular post–mortem examinations between one and six weeks of age – even on apparently healthy birds – to give early warning of possible health problems, particularly of enteric disease. Villus development, gut fill and caecal health are key areas to check.

He believes in the ‘Seed, feed, weed’ concept for developing and maintaining a healthy gut flora. That means:

• seeding the GI tract with probiotic at the hatchery and as the poults arrive on-farm
• feeding with organic acid at the farm to develop the beneficial flora and check the bad ones, and
• weeding with what he calls an ‘attachment blocker’ such as mannan–oligosacchiaride product to prevent the ‘bad’ ones attaching themselves to the GI tract.

Good gut health promotes strong immunity, including good caecal development by seven days of age, according to Mr Alexander.

“A compromised digestive system is an open door to disease,” he said.

The Right Environment

Turning his attention to environmental conditions in the house, Mr Alexander stressed the need for the correct ventilation rate to keep humidity under 60 per cent and prevent the build-up of carbon dioxide, which can cause damage to the respiratory system. Draughts must be eliminated, he said.

Air quality is important, he stressed. Minimum ventilation rates needs to be set, with timers and thermostats because Mr Alexander stressed the need to control air moisture, carbon dioxide and pathogens in the litter.

Gases can affect bird behaviour and may lead to raised early mortality. Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, has been linked to waterbelly, roundheart and aortic rupture as well as poor uniformity and reduced weight gain. The goal should be to keep carbon monoxide below 25 to 30ppm, and data loggers are important to make sure these levels are not exceeded, he recommended.

Coccidiosis Control without Antibiotics

Alternatives for coccidiosis control are ionophores, chemicals and vaccination. Mr Alexander says the same equipment can be used for the application of the vaccine as for the probiotic. He offered the tip that a proper cover to the vaccination box will keep the birds warm and active so that they consume the vaccine more quickly. It is important to check that they have consumed the vaccine by checking the tongue for the temporary stain.

Building immunity is important, he said. Vaccination at day–old gives about 30 per cent immunity in the first cycle, which builds up to around 80 per cent for the second cycle, 90 per cent for the third cycle and 100 per cent for the fourth cycle.

Mr Alexander suggests not giving anticoccidials before two weeks of age to ensure that a successful successive vaccination has taken place.

His top tip for brooder management is that if the birds stop eating, it may be an early sign of coccidiosis. He suggests using a probiotic, adding the organic acid and paying particular attention to keeping the young birds warm.

Summing up his key points to achieving good results rearing turkeys without antibiotics, Mr Alexander mentioned:

• biosecurity: planned, monitored and updated
• water sanitation: ORP consistently over 700 to 750mV
• gut health: establish ‘good’ microflora
• ventilation: control temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide
• litter management: regular tilling helps control pathogens, and finally
• attention to detail will keep you ahead of any problems.

“And above all, keep it simple,” Mr Alexander told the audience.

June 2012