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Medically Important Antibiotics Are Still Being Used to Fatten Up Pigs
Because scientists have identified antibiotic-resistant infections as a serious public health threat that kills more than 35,000 Americans annually, regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been working to reign in the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture — which contributes to the problem — for more than a decade. Seven years ago, the agency announced the most significant step to date: ending the use of antibiotics also important in human medicine solely for “growth promotion.”
Putting drugs in feed and water to make animals grow bigger and faster, thereby increasing profits, had been a common practice in industrial animal agriculture for decades. While the FDA didn’t end the practice whole hog, the change meant that going forward, farmers would only be able to use specific medically important antibiotics to prevent and treat disease, not fatten pigs. In 2017, the change contributed to a significant, immediate drop in antibiotics sold for use in animals.
However, new data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests some pork producers may be flouting FDA’s regulations by feeding important drugs to pigs primarily to speed their growth.
Getting Farmworkers to Use PPE Is Hard, but It’s the Best Way to Stop an H5N1 Bird Flu Epidemic
Although a third U.S. dairy worker has been confirmed to be infected with the H5N1 bird flu, many dairy farms are still unwilling to use even freely offered personal protective equipment (PPE). This is cause for alarm. Working with a pathogen assigned a biosafety level of 3 — meaning it “can cause serious or potentially lethal disease through respiratory transmission” — with at best BSL 2 level protections is playing with fire.
This lack of protection leaves farmworkers who interact with potentially infected animals, including dairy cows, chickens, and alpacas, at risk for infection with a virus that has killed half of the people in whom it was diagnosed. And the more H5N1 is able to interact with and infect people, the greater the risk that it might accumulate the handful of mutations it needs to become capable of human-to-human transmission, a stepping stone to a possible epidemic.
The single most effective way to ward off a potential crisis of H5N1 bird flu and to protect farmworkers is to ensure they have usable and effective PPE. While several experts have rightfully called for widespread testing of farm animals and workers, many farm owners and workers have been reluctant to test due to concerns of losing work, the undocumented status of many workers in this sector, and financial loss.
Even if uptake of testing did improve, it would still identify infections only after they occur. Workers would still be in danger and H5N1 would still be given chances to evolve and potentially leap to human transmissibility. Using PPE to seal the human-animal interface from spillover infections is the only way to protect workers and eliminate the chance for H5N1 to crossover in the first place.
Mexico Says Bird Flu Patient Died of Chronic Disease, Not Virus
A man who contracted bird flu in Mexico died due to chronic diseases and not the virus, Mexico’s health ministry said on Friday. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization reported the first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with A(H5N2) avian influenza in Mexico.
In a Friday press conference in Geneva, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier described the man’s case as a “multifactorial death” and noted that experts were still investigating whether he was infected by someone or by contact with animals.
Mexico’s health ministry on Friday stressed that the 59-year-old man’s death was due to chronic conditions that led to septic shock, and was not attributed to the virus. “The diseases were long-term and caused conditions that led to the failure of several organs,” the ministry said, citing the findings by a team of experts.
The man had chronic kidney disease, diabetes and arterial hypertension over the past 14 years, according to health officials.
WHO Says These Industries Kill 2.7 Million a Year in Europe
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday blamed alcohol, tobacco, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and fossil fuels for causing 2.7 million deaths a year in Europe.
In a report, titled “Commercial determinants of noncommunicable diseases in the WHO European Region,” the global health body called for “strict regulation to curb industry power” and promote public health.
These “four industries kill at least 7,000 people in our region every day,” Hans Kluge, the director of the WHO Europe region, said in a statement. Overall, the WHO said, 1.15 million deaths per year in Europe are caused by smoking, 426,857 by alcohol, 117,290 by diets high in processed meats and 252,187 by diets high in salt.
These figures do not even include deaths caused by obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar or high cholesterol level — all of which are linked to unhealthy diets, it said.
USDA Reports More H5N1 Detections in Mice and Cats
In its latest updates, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) reported 36 more H5N1 avian flu detections in house mice, all in the same New Mexico county, as well as four more virus detections in domestic cats.
On June 4, APHIS first reported H5N1 detections in house mice from New Mexico’s Roosevelt County, and today it reported 36 more from the same location, raising the total to 47. Collection dates for the latest detections range from May 6 to May 12.
Also today, APHIS reported four more H5N1 detections in domestic cats, including one from Oklahoma, which hasn’t recently reported the virus in poultry or in dairy cows.
The three other H5N1 detections in domestic cats — sampled in late May — were in Michigan’s Clinton County, where H5N1 had been found in dairy herds, and in Idaho’s Jerome County, where H5N1 has been detected in poultry, alpacas, and dairy herds. The fourth new detection was from a cat from Colorado’s Morgan County.
So far, the virus has been reported in 21 domestic cats.
