safeguarding health

[tadd]

As somebody who works with chemicals, biology really is the scary bit. Mostly cause it can self replicate.

Yet we continue to force nature to 'test statistics' on many fronts...such as feeding low level antibiotics to livestock to fatten them up.

What's the phrase: a very large amount of monkeys banging on a typewriter will come up with hamlet?

I get that there is no direct evidence as to this contributing to any resistant bug, but knowing how biology works, why are we even 'testing nature' on this? Yes it is statistically very rare for the correct mutation to cause resistance and not affect some other important process but come on... we aren't helping keep that at bay by the total scale of what we are doing. Livestock are reported to receive over 13 million kilograms of pharma, or approximately 80% of all antibiotics, in the USA annually (1). I haven't found numbers on the total number of animals that receive antibiotics yet.

Antibiotic use in humans has been shown to select antibiotic-resistant strains, and we have several that kill many every year. Biology is no different in humans than chickens, pigs, or cows.

So why do we keep at it? Are we just that beholden to money to throw away our health?

The only thing that somewhat shines in this mess is that we stopped doing research on sulfa drugs back in the 30s and 40s. Lots of side effects, but lots of unexplored promise.

1. Hollis A. Ahmed Z. Preserving antibiotics, rationally. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2013;369:2474–2476

[RKDinOKC]

Have always heard the eating foods that were grown locally help your body build up it's defenses for local illness. Especially honey from local bees and allergies.

[Tervuren]

The antibiotics as I understand, do not create resistant strains, rather they kill off what isn't resistant to that antibiotic. Eventually this leaves behind a population of what is resistant.

So its like getting a breather now, for something that would be a problem anyway if you didn't, and will end up being a problem again in the future.

Is this correct?

When it comes to health, prevention seems to be the better route than a cure; but people want to do whatever without personal consequence. Hand themselves a problem, want instant cure. Repeat.

[vash]

i seriously wish i was a more successful hunter. and a better gardener.

but bottomline: i dont think humans were built to eat so much animal matter anyways. the meat industry pulled the wool over our eyes a long time ago..now they have to keep up with the insatiable appetite they created.

[island911]

Food snobbery is all the rage today.

I would say Champaign problems but... you know... someone will point to the risk of drowning if you swim in Champaign. :-/

[vash]

Originally Posted by island911

Food snobbery is all the rage today.

I would say Champaign problems but... you know.

interesting..

you mind elaborating..i think i know where you are going, but i dont want to assume.

like "organic foods"? is that food snobbery?

[Tobra]

Sulfa drugs kick a lot of ass, MRSA is generally susceptible to them, one of few oral meds that is effective.

Originally Posted by Tervuren

The antibiotics as I understand, do not create resistant strains, rather they kill off what isn't resistant to that antibiotic. Eventually this leaves behind a population of what is resistant.

So its like getting a breather now, for something that would be a problem anyway if you didn't, and will end up being a problem again in the future.

Is this correct?

When it comes to health, prevention seems to be the better route than a cure; but people want to do whatever without personal consequence. Hand themselves a problem, want instant cure. Repeat.

This is on point, particularly the last paragraph.

There are a number of things leading to resistant strains of bacteria. Over utilization, people not taking full course of antibiotics and there are some antibiotics that tend to induce resistance. For example, if you take a quinilone antibiotic, like Cipro, by itself, it can do this, according to the infectious disease guys. I have talked to a few that attribute the lion's share of the problem to inappropriate use, and over use of Cipro.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by tadd

As somebody who works with chemicals, biology really is the scary bit. Mostly cause it can self replicate.

Yet we continue to force nature to 'test statistics' on many fronts...such as feeding low level antibiotics to livestock to fatten them up.

What's the phrase: a very large amount of monkeys banging on a typewriter will come up with hamlet?

I get that there is no direct evidence as to this contributing to any resistant bug, but knowing how biology works, why are we even 'testing nature' on this? Yes it is statistically very rare for the correct mutation to cause resistance and not affect some other important process but come on... we aren't helping keep that at bay by the total scale of what we are doing. Livestock are reported to receive over 13 million kilograms of pharma, or approximately 80% of all antibiotics, in the USA annually (1). I haven't found numbers on the total number of animals that receive antibiotics yet.

Antibiotic use in humans has been shown to select antibiotic-resistant strains, and we have several that kill many every year. Biology is no different in humans than chickens, pigs, or cows.

So why do we keep at it? Are we just that beholden to money to throw away our health?

The only thing that somewhat shines in this mess is that we stopped doing research on sulfa drugs back in the 30s and 40s. Lots of side effects, but lots of unexplored promise.

1. Hollis A. Ahmed Z. Preserving antibiotics, rationally. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2013;369:2474–2476

You ask why we do something that is beneficial, even though somebody thinks it could possibly maybe someday turn out to be a bad idea with no proof to substantiate it.
And this bothers you.

But you drive a car knowing is it a go-zillion times more dangerous to your health that antibiotics given to a chicken.

Perspective.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by vash

interesting..

you mind elaborating..i think i know where you are going, but i dont want to assume.

like "organic foods"? is that food snobbery?

Yes.

[GH85Carrera]

It is almost hard to believe but antibiotics is a very recent invention. Just in my lifetime, and I ain't THAT old!

My dad talked about the days of friends dying from stepping on a rusty nail.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by RKDinOKC

Have always heard the eating foods that were grown locally help your body build up it's defenses for local illness. Especially honey from local bees and allergies.

Honey can KILL YOU!
(Even the organic kind)

Can honey kill you? Well, yes actually. It can.
“[Botulism] is caused by neurotoxic proteins so poisonous that one-millionth of a gram of them can kill a man and one pint would be enough to kill everyone on earth.”

-New York Times

Honey has always been remarked for the length of time which it can be stored without spoiling. It is a unique substance in that it has many antimicrobial and antifungal properties to it. For example, it is so high in sugars that very little water exists in it, thus most microorganisms cannot grow in this ‘hypertonic’ environment. It likely could be stored forever if its container is kept airtight and in a cool area.

So how could this un-spoilable substance cause as deadly an illness as Botulism? The secret lies in the bees. Bees, while collecting pollen, are continually in contact with soil and dust particles, which inevitably make it back to the hive and into the honey being produced. These particles nearly always contain spores of the common bacteria Clostridium botulinum, the causative agent of Botulism.

Now, on their own, these spores never cause illness. Spores are a dormant form of the bacterium, but when these spores are put into ideal conditions (with sufficient nutrients, water, etc) they germinate. The bacteria itself will not hurt you either. Yet, when in a low oxygen environment like your stomach, they begin to produce a protein called botulin. This is a neurotoxin, meaning it is a substance known to be poisonous to nerve tissue.

The neurotoxin affects the body by interfering with the way nerves tell muscles to contract, and thus move. This limpness is termed ‘flaccid paralysis.’ Death typically occurs via respiratory failure, when the neurotoxin causes the diaphragm muscle in the chest to no longer move. Without the diaphragm, the lungs can no longer fill with air and thus one becomes unable to breathe.

Yet, if Botulism is so bad, then why do we eat honey and never become ill? The answer is in our immune system and our digestive system. In a healthy individual, the stomach and immune system will destroy the botulism spores before they germinate and begin to produce the toxin. However, those whose immune systems are compromised, such as HIV/AIDS patients or infants, are unable to combat the Botulism spores. These individuals are highly susceptible to being infected with the bacteria.

Botulism is not only contracted through eating honey, either. Often the soil that contains botulism spores ends up on the outside of some fruits and vegetables commonly used in canning. Due to the low oxygen environment in a can, botulism spores often germinate and produce large amounts of the botulin neurotoxin, which when ingested, cause the botulism illness. This can be prevented with proper sterile technique during the canning process.

Of all botulism cases, only 25% are food born, but 72% are infantile botulism. This is indicative of how many parents are unaware that honey can be highly toxic to infants.

The fundamental message here is that honey could kill you, but only under the right circumstances. It is important to be aware of the dangers botulism spores pose to individuals with weakened immune systems. Because babies are so often afflicted with infantile botulism, it becomes aparant that this awareness of botulism in honey is not widespread enough. Botulism is nearly extinct in modern countries, and these cases of infantile botulism are highly preventable via dissementation of this simple lesson: don’t feed honey to babies.

https://microbiologymelts.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/can-honey-kill-you-well-yes-actually-it-can/

Maybe if they put antibiotics in honey ........

[vash]

maybe it's a case of too much of a good thing.

[Tobra]

Sam, please take it somewhere else.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Tobra

Sam, please take it somewhere else.

Did I post something you don't agree with, or just something you don't like?

[tadd]

Tobra:
Sammy just doesn't see what the issue is and that is shown with the car analogy. Although I like the image of us driving ourselves there!

Some things follow a delta function... like plagues. Right bug, right time, no meds. Back to the black death and loosing a 1/3rd of the population. Killing of 1 in 3 might not be a bad thing, but that is another discussion :-).

[Tobra]

Sam, I would try to explain it to you, but I don't think that is possible.

BTW, the low dose ABx are not to fatten them up, it is to reduce the chances they get sick, which is a real concern when you have livestock packed together. While this is not a good thing, more germain to the discussion is the over prescription for human use. A lot of antibiotics that are taken, get peed down the drain, or dumped when not taken. A lot of kids get prescriptions for a virus, when a virus is not affected by that prescription.

We are already seeing resistant bacteria, some that are resistant to everything in the tool box, which is pretty scary.

[tadd]

I guess that is kinda what bothers me. It wasn't that long ago that smallpox raged. My 7th grade teacher walked funny cause he had it as a kid. Everyone knew someone who had it and lost someone back when it was raging.

It seems it has just been long enough we have forgotten how bad (delta function) it can be.

Again, there is no direct (read genomic) evidence that low level antibiotics have caused a resistant strain. That so far, has only been due to ignorance of use and overprescribing for medial applications.

However, given the shear numbers of organisms we are inoculating with the volumes we are using, it just seems that we are improving (speeding along) that 'lucky chance' of nature to let the bugs win.

[Tervuren]

Tadd, if we were universally applying this it would be an issue, but it is only be done in places where the focus is on minimum end price.

We're raising animals in conditions they wouldn't normally survive in sufficient numbers for costs to work out. Stopping raises the price of meat significantly, which has impact on those of lower incomes.

Those that can afford it by their choices can still keep what I would consider more sustainable practices in place.

It is something we can ride until it fails, then we will be back to where we were before starting these practices. There will be a spike in price during transition, but I do not see us killing off that transition from being able to happen providing we keep older methods that require more space, more work, and better live stock separation in practice alongside with the newer lower work and space required methods.

The scarier side of things relates to plants, given the nature of their reproduction being carried across the atmosphere. Changes with plants are going to be a lot harder to reverse compared to live stock where the breeding stock of a bad strand can all be killed, or diseased animals can all be killed. No host, no disease.

[RKDinOKC]

I'm a carrier. Stepped on a bright shiny new roofing nail and got a nasty MRSA infection. Cut off 1/3 of my foot and was 2 weeks before the infectious diseases specialist found something to stop it. It got in my blood and really messed my health up. Went from zero to advanced stages of diabetes in 6 months. Before my foot healed it tried to come back too. Was told that anytime I get hospitalized I get to stay in the infectious diseases ward. Whatever they gave me to stop it wiped out my gut microbes your body uses to fight infection and still have problems catching things.

[tadd]

tervuren:
Squirrel moment: Glycophosphates (round up ag) is a whole different discussion, but one worth having.

As to the OT, I don't think this is an issue with skyrocketing meat prices. Looking at the CPI, sirloin steak in 1913 was 24 cents a pound. Using the CPI index calculator,
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.45&year1=196001&year2=201310,
that gives $6 a pound today corrected for inflation. Given my area, that is a bit less than what I see at Costco.

This link has more dates for hamburger: The Changing Prices of stuff in 80 years comparison of prices over the last 80yrs
12 cents in 1930 is only $1.64 adjust for inflation to 2013. A bit less than the $4.68 a pound listed.

Given that growth promoting antibiotics didn't really start till the 1950s, that 45 cents per pound in 1960 is a healthy $3.59 in 2013 dollars. Closer to the actual 2013 price of $4.68, but still less.

Guess what I am trying to say is that if GPA were that big of an improvement in output, shouldn't meat be much more inexpensive now than in the past? Since it isn't, doesn't that imply that other factors are at work, thus removal of GPA shouldn't be a huge issue?

Currently, several mechanisms of action are attributed to antibiotics, but no clear understanding has been achieved. The use of antibiotics to enhance growth and feed efficiency was introduced without rigorous testing ~50 years ago. being first described in the mid 1940s.

A few papers on GPA:
[SIZE="2"] National Research Council. Washington: National Academy Press; 1999. The use of drugs in food animals: benefits and risks. [PubMed]

Woodward SA, Harms RH, Miles RD, Janky DM, Ruiz N. Influence of Virginiamycin on yield of broilers fed four levels of energy. Poult Sci. 1988;67:1222–4. [PubMed]

Leeson S. Growth and carcass characteristics of broiler chickens fed virginiamycin. Nutr Rep Int. 1984;29:1383–9.