February 10, 2010 12:17 PM
Animal Antibiotic Overuse Hurting Humans?
By: Katie Couric
Two years ago, 46-year-old Bill Reeves, who worked at a poultry processing plant in Batesville, Arkansas, developed a lump under his right eye.
"It went from about the size of a mosquito bite to about the size of a grapefruit," he said.
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reports doctors tried several drugs that usually work on this potentially deadly infection: methicillin resistant staph or MRSA - before one saved his life.
"You go from a just regular day to knowing you may die in a couple of hours," Reeves said.
MRSA is a pathogen in many hospital-acquired infections and colonization is becoming a drastically growing clinical and epidemic challenge. MRSA acquired from hospitals has been an established epidemic; however, livestock associated MRSA is growingly becoming more prevalent (Robert et al. 1219).
Bill Reeves doesn’t stand alone with his MRSA misfortunes. Other individuals in the livestock industry are reporting similar illnesses that do not respond efficiency to drugs. Joyce Long, a worker at a hatchery commonly dealing with eggs and poultry has acquired MRSA at least a dozen times. A total of thirty-seven workers got sick at the same hatchery and are unsuccessfully in the process of filing personal injury claims.
"It was real painful. Shots don't help, because it's so infected, it don't help much," said Joyce.
A University of Iowa Study last year, found a new strain of MRSA -- in nearly three-quarters of hogs and nearly two-thirds of the workers -- on several farms in Iowa and Western Illinois. All of them use antibiotics, routinely. On antibiotic-free farms no MRSA was found.
A rising concern among health workers is if the illness trend of those handling farm animals will transfer over to the rest of society. Approximately 70,000 Americans died from drug resistant infections that are exponentially increasing over the past few years. The more bacteria are exposed to antibiotics over time, an increased resistance continues to develop. Scientists such as microbiologist Glenn Morris concur that antibiotic resistance is noteworthy health crisis caused by unmonitored overuse in humans and livestock, which are commonly administered for health and growth reasons. Morris is among the health care professionals who are actively urging regulatory companies such as the Food and Drug Administration to limit and better monitor the use of antibiotics in farm animals. He demands more transparency from the FDA and wants it to promptly take better initiatives in eliminating ill-advised antibiotic use and reporting progress.
"My fear is that one of these days we are going to have an organism that's resistant to everything that we know, and we'll be left powerless," said Thomas Cummins, Batesville's chief medical officer.
Scientists are worried that Americans may be acquiring drug-resistant MRSA - not from eating, but from handling tainted meat from animals that were given antibiotics.
Shelley Hearne has studied the health effects of factory farming for 25 years.
"How does this go from the farm to the meat counter, to having an adverse effect on humans," Couric asked.
"If the bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics, it can actually spread in many ways," Hearne said. "It could be in the food supply, but it also can be in waters that runoff in a farm. It could be in the air. It can happen very quickly in many different ways. It's why it's a practice that has to stop on the farms."
Former hog worker, Kim Howland took CBS News inside a factory farm in Oklahoma where she worked two years ago.
"They administer drugs, you know, constantly, constantly, constantly," Howland said. "That's their fix for everything.
She said drugs like Tylan, Keflex, and Baytril, the same classes used to treat everything from skin to respiratory infections in humans - were given regularly to pigs that were not sick.
Her husband contracted MRSA and almost died.
"My conclusion was that I had carried it home," she said.
We are not seeing quick enough initiatives been undertaken to reduce these antibiotic resistance medical tragedies. They continue to be over administered because they keep the cost of meat at supermarkets lower and profits of livestock farmers higher. Many farmers and regulatory works insist that antibiotic use is carefully monitored and claim that their usage is for no extraneous reasons except therapeutic. However, the bottom line is that no one is really efficiently monitoring antibiotic use in livestock farming.
The Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit has released a list with a variety of alternatives to use in place of antibiotics in farm animals. They suggest using pre and pro biotic feed additives to strengthen immune systems, encouraging the use of vaccines as alternative and prevention methods, and promoting bacteriophage therapy which involves the use of phages to attack specific bacteria without fear of resistance developing.
Unfortunately, challenges still remain with antibiotic alternatives due to convenience and lack on knowledge on the gastrointestinal tract and the microbiota that comprises it along with clarifying the mechanisms antibiotics use to enhance performance (Looft et al. 116).
Original article:
“Animal Antibioitc Overuse Hurting Humans?” CBSnews.com. Columbia Broadcasting System. 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 11 July 2013. Transcript.
Total Word Count: 838
My Words: 437
DISCLAIMER: Parts of this website are fictional and were created for a class. Please email my instructor with questions: [email protected].
Animal Antibiotic Overuse Hurting Humans?
By: Katie Couric
Two years ago, 46-year-old Bill Reeves, who worked at a poultry processing plant in Batesville, Arkansas, developed a lump under his right eye.
"It went from about the size of a mosquito bite to about the size of a grapefruit," he said.
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reports doctors tried several drugs that usually work on this potentially deadly infection: methicillin resistant staph or MRSA - before one saved his life.
"You go from a just regular day to knowing you may die in a couple of hours," Reeves said.
MRSA is a pathogen in many hospital-acquired infections and colonization is becoming a drastically growing clinical and epidemic challenge. MRSA acquired from hospitals has been an established epidemic; however, livestock associated MRSA is growingly becoming more prevalent (Robert et al. 1219).
Bill Reeves doesn’t stand alone with his MRSA misfortunes. Other individuals in the livestock industry are reporting similar illnesses that do not respond efficiency to drugs. Joyce Long, a worker at a hatchery commonly dealing with eggs and poultry has acquired MRSA at least a dozen times. A total of thirty-seven workers got sick at the same hatchery and are unsuccessfully in the process of filing personal injury claims.
"It was real painful. Shots don't help, because it's so infected, it don't help much," said Joyce.
A University of Iowa Study last year, found a new strain of MRSA -- in nearly three-quarters of hogs and nearly two-thirds of the workers -- on several farms in Iowa and Western Illinois. All of them use antibiotics, routinely. On antibiotic-free farms no MRSA was found.
A rising concern among health workers is if the illness trend of those handling farm animals will transfer over to the rest of society. Approximately 70,000 Americans died from drug resistant infections that are exponentially increasing over the past few years. The more bacteria are exposed to antibiotics over time, an increased resistance continues to develop. Scientists such as microbiologist Glenn Morris concur that antibiotic resistance is noteworthy health crisis caused by unmonitored overuse in humans and livestock, which are commonly administered for health and growth reasons. Morris is among the health care professionals who are actively urging regulatory companies such as the Food and Drug Administration to limit and better monitor the use of antibiotics in farm animals. He demands more transparency from the FDA and wants it to promptly take better initiatives in eliminating ill-advised antibiotic use and reporting progress.
"My fear is that one of these days we are going to have an organism that's resistant to everything that we know, and we'll be left powerless," said Thomas Cummins, Batesville's chief medical officer.
Scientists are worried that Americans may be acquiring drug-resistant MRSA - not from eating, but from handling tainted meat from animals that were given antibiotics.
Shelley Hearne has studied the health effects of factory farming for 25 years.
"How does this go from the farm to the meat counter, to having an adverse effect on humans," Couric asked.
"If the bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics, it can actually spread in many ways," Hearne said. "It could be in the food supply, but it also can be in waters that runoff in a farm. It could be in the air. It can happen very quickly in many different ways. It's why it's a practice that has to stop on the farms."
Former hog worker, Kim Howland took CBS News inside a factory farm in Oklahoma where she worked two years ago.
"They administer drugs, you know, constantly, constantly, constantly," Howland said. "That's their fix for everything.
She said drugs like Tylan, Keflex, and Baytril, the same classes used to treat everything from skin to respiratory infections in humans - were given regularly to pigs that were not sick.
Her husband contracted MRSA and almost died.
"My conclusion was that I had carried it home," she said.
We are not seeing quick enough initiatives been undertaken to reduce these antibiotic resistance medical tragedies. They continue to be over administered because they keep the cost of meat at supermarkets lower and profits of livestock farmers higher. Many farmers and regulatory works insist that antibiotic use is carefully monitored and claim that their usage is for no extraneous reasons except therapeutic. However, the bottom line is that no one is really efficiently monitoring antibiotic use in livestock farming.
The Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit has released a list with a variety of alternatives to use in place of antibiotics in farm animals. They suggest using pre and pro biotic feed additives to strengthen immune systems, encouraging the use of vaccines as alternative and prevention methods, and promoting bacteriophage therapy which involves the use of phages to attack specific bacteria without fear of resistance developing.
Unfortunately, challenges still remain with antibiotic alternatives due to convenience and lack on knowledge on the gastrointestinal tract and the microbiota that comprises it along with clarifying the mechanisms antibiotics use to enhance performance (Looft et al. 116).
Original article:
“Animal Antibioitc Overuse Hurting Humans?” CBSnews.com. Columbia Broadcasting System. 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 11 July 2013. Transcript.
Total Word Count: 838
My Words: 437
DISCLAIMER: Parts of this website are fictional and were created for a class. Please email my instructor with questions: [email protected].