Blog

Category Archives: food

January 3, 2010

Questioning meat-raising and meat-eating — in eat-everything France

0 Comments
Happy New Year, constant readers. I’m honored and flattered to have had the chance to spend the past few years with you here. 2010 is going to be a big year — not just because SUPERBUG will be published, but because the issue of antibiotic resistance really, really is gathering force in the public mind. [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in animals, antibiotics
December 30, 2009

Antibiotics in chickens and links to human infections

0 Comments
From the January issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the CDC (and therefore free. Must I keep urging you to read it? Go, already), here’s a roundup of bad news about bad bugs.In Canada, researchers from that country’s Public Health Agency have found a “strong correlation” between the use of ceftiofur, a third-generation cephalosporin, [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Canada, Europe, Iceland, animals, antibiotics
December 15, 2009

Antibiotics in animals – a warning from the poultry world

0 Comments
Constant reader Pat Gardiner guided me to an enlightening post at the website of the agricultural magazine World Poultry that questions the routine use of antibiotics in food animals. It’s written by Wiebe van der Sluis, a Netherlands journalist from a farming background, founder of World Poultry and also the magazines Pig Progress and Poultry [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in MRSA, Netherlands, ST 398, animals, antibiotics
December 1, 2009

Wednesday a.m.: Congressional briefing on antibiotics in livestock – live-tweeted!

0 Comments
Folks: On Wednesday 2 December, at 9:30 a.m. EST, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) will host a Congressional briefing about antibiotic use in food animals. As a reminder, Rep. Slaughter is an MPH and Congress’s only microbiologist, and the chief sponsor of PAMTA, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act that proposes restricting antibiotic use [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in ST 398, animals, antibiotics, legislation
November 26, 2009

New pig strain in China

0 Comments
Via Emerging Infectious Diseases comes the full version of a piece of research I posted on in September that was presented at the London conference Methicillin-resistant Staphylococci in Animals: Veterinary and Public Health Implications. A new MRSA variant — not ST398 — has been spotted in pigs in China. Luca Guardabassi and Arshnee Moodley of the [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in China, MRSA, ST 398, ST9, animals
November 26, 2009

"Pig MRSA" in the EU – long-awaited survey

0 Comments
It’s not very likely that people will be eating much pork today — OK, maybe some pancetta in the Brussels sprouts — and that’s good, because there’s lots of news today about MRSA in pigs. (In fact, there’s a ton of news just this week. Make it stop.) The European Food Safety Authority has published a long-awaited, [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Europe, MRSA, ST 398, animals, pigs
November 23, 2009

Antibiotic misuse in animals – one example

0 Comments
Via the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the excellent blog Fair Food Fight comes the story of two cows, from two Minnesota farms, that have been reprimanded by the US Food and Drug Administration for bringing cows to slaughter that turned out to have been massively overdosed with antibiotics. From the Strib: In a rare move, federal officials [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in animals, antibiotics, legislation
October 30, 2009

New reports on animals, food, MRSA ST398

0 Comments
Well, constant readers, didn’t expect to be gone *that* long. Many apologies. There was a good reason — actually, several: I attended a journalism meeting, and spoke at a second meeting. But most important, I received, marked up, and returned the galleys of SUPERBUG. Yes, it’s really starting to look like a book now. [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Europe, ST 398, animals, antibiotics
September 27, 2009

New news on MRSA and animals

2 Comments
Constant readers, I’ve been behind the Great Firewall of China for two weeks, unable to post. (Apparently Blogger is not always unavailable there, but access has tightened up in advance of the National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.) I left with a file of things to post in my spare time — and so now [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in Iowa, MRSA, ST 398, animals
August 20, 2009

Non-medical use of antibiotics: A whole new problem with ethanol

0 Comments
Constant readers, we’ve talked frequently about the emerging recognition that the enormous use of antibiotics in agriculture is fueling the development of resistance, both directly in the case of specific organisms such as MRSA ST-398, and indirectly in that it pushes the evolution of resistance factors that bacteria then trade amongst themselves. (For a [...]
Written by Maryn McKenna
Also posted in ST 398, animals, antibiotics, ethanol, resistance