Image: MATT COLLINS
Agriculture has fueled the eruption of human civilization. Efficiently raised, affordable crops and livestock feed our growing population, and hunger has largely been banished from the developed world as a result. Yet there are reasons to believe that we are beginning to lose control of our great agricultural machine. The security of our food supply is at risk in ways more noxious than anyone had feared.
The trouble starts with crops. Orange groves in Florida and California are falling to fast-moving blights with no known cure. Cavendish-variety bananas the global standard, each genetically identical to the next will almost certainly be wiped out by emerging infectious disease, just as the Cavendish's predecessor was six decades ago. And as entomologists Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp describe in "Saving the Honey bee," on page 40, a mysterious affliction has ravaged honeybee colonies around the U.S., jeopardizing an agricultural system that is utterly dependent on farmed, traveling hives to pollinate vast swaths of monoculture. The ailment may be in part the result of the stresses imposed on hives by this uniquely modern system.
Plants and animals are not the only ones getting sick, however. New evidence indicates that our agricultural practices are leading directly to the spread of human disease.
Much has been made in recent years of MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria, and for good reason. In 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available, about 95,000 MRSA infections caused the deaths of nearly 19,000 Americans. The disease first incubated in hospitals the killer bacterium is an inevitable evolutionary response to the widespread use of antibiotics but has since found a home in locker rooms, prisons and child care facilities. Now the bacteria have spread to the farm.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. Modern factory farms keep so many animals in such a small space that the animals must be given low doses of antibiotics to shield them from the fetid conditions. The drug-resistant bacteria that emerge have now entered our food supply. The first study to investigate farm-bred MRSA in the U.S. amazingly, the Food and Drug Administration has shown little interest in testing the nation's livestock for this disease recently found that 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of pig workers in the survey harbored the bacteria. Unfortunately, these infections can spread. According to a report published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, MRSA from animals is now thought to be responsible for more than 20 percent of all human MRSA cases in the Netherlands.
In April 2008 a high-profile commission of scientists, farmers, doctors and veterinarians recommended that the FDA phase out the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animal production, to "preserve these drugs to treat sick animals, not healthy ones" in the words of former Kansas governor John Carlin, the commission's chair. The FDA agreed and soon announced that it would ban the use of one widespread antibiotic except for strictly delineated medical purposes. But five days before the ban was set to take effect, the agency quietly reversed its position. Although no official reason was given, the opposition of the powerful farm lobby is widely thought to have played a role.
This is just one example of a food production system that protects a narrow set of interests over the nation's public health. Simple measures such as the reinstatement of the FDA's initial ruling are necessary and important steps. But Congress needs to take a far more comprehensive approach to realign the country's agricultural priorities with its health priorities, to eliminate subsidies that encourage factory farming, and to encourage the growth of polyculture and good old-fashioned crop rotation in the U.S. As the world is quickly learning, a civilization can only be as healthy as its food supply.
Editor's Note: This story was originally published with the title "Healthy Growth for U.S. Farms"
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8 Comments
Add Commentsounds potentially catastrophic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut then again. Don't let facts stand in the way of a good scary story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother example of a narrow set of interests, the most vertically integrated agriculture businesses, harming the agriculture industry is the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). NAIS, if it becomes mandatory, will require any one with livestock, even one chicken or a horse, to register their premise with the government, obtain relatively expensive RFID chips for identification, and report into a fee- based database, within 24 hours, whenever one of several events occur: birth of an animal, death of animal, an animal leaves its premise, an animal returns to its premise. There is an exemption - large agriculture entities that process livestock in lots only need one id for the lot. The financial burden for small producers, almost half of whom do not have a computer or internet access, will be huge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince 2004 the USDA has spent over $130 million trying to coerce producers into voluntarily signing up for the NAIS. The USDA has diverted funds from other disease surveillance and detection programs towards the NAIS, which they claim will let them respond to any animal health problem within 48 hours and know which animals have commingled. According to the USDA there are over 1.4 million premises with over 97 million cattle, billions of chickens, over 5 million horses, and millions of sheep and goats.
Sounds far fetched that this could ever work, especially since it will rely on the 70%+ of producers who oppose this system. The USDA has not yet released a cost/benefit analysis of the NAIS. They have not addressed how our current system, which has been extremely effective, is no longer valid. Tracking of livestock will stop at the processing door, but the USDA promotes the NAIS as a food safety program because it will help reassure the consumer about the safety of their food.
Instead of a reality-based system , like our current system, of inspections, quarantine of imported livestock, vaccinations, testing, and education, the USDA is turning our animal disease programs into a virtual system of RFID chips, databases, GPS coordinates, and graphical displays of kill zones.
NAIS would not have helped, you are right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have spent almost decade on this disaster, day after day: there at the beginning, with pigs and in pig country when the horror story started.
We decided on a self-sufficient lifestyle and walked into a nightmare.
There is little doubt that MRSA in pigs has been leaking into the hospitals for some years.
There was a nasty mutation to a porcine circovirus in Britain in 1999 which caused an epidemic that required huge quantities of antibiotics to handle the consequences.
MRSA in pigs was the result, usually the ST398 strain.
The Dutch picked up the problem about four years ago and commendably make everything they knew public.
Both circovirus and MRSA epidemics have now travelled the world along with accompanying cover-ups. It is quite a nasty situation - now coming to light in the USA.
MRSA st398, mutated circovirus and various other unpleasant zoonotic diseases have now reached American pig farms.
The people exposing the scandal in the US are to be commended.
I have extensive records available to anyone researching the link and can often answer general questions quickly and accurately.
Regards
Pat Gardiner
Release the results of testing British pigs for MRSA and C.Diff now!
http://www.go-self-sufficient.com and http://animal-epidemics.blogspot.com
"Modern factory farms keep so many animals in such a small space that the animals must be given low doses of antibiotics to shield them from the fetid conditions"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice use of emotive language there, yet again portraying conventional agriculture as factory farming. US farmers are the most efficient food producers in the world and have extremely high animal welfare standards - I've yet to see any farm animals kept under the 'fetid conditions' that you describe.
Prophylactic antibiotics are not used in dairy production, and growth-promoting antibiotics used in beef production are entirely different from the ones used in human disease prevention. It's interesting to note that the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is similar between conventional and organic farms (Roesch et al., 2006, J. Dairy Sci).
Your article seems to suggest that we should cease to practice conventional animal agriculture - if so, how do you suggest that we provide sufficient safe, wholesome, nutritious meat and dairy products to the increasing US and global populations?
Dr Jude Capper
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dairy Science
Washington State University
Dr. Capper has apparently never driven Interstate 5 past Cucamonga, California, where the odor and crowding of cattle are overwhelmingly obvious... definitely my definition of 'fetid.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I recently drove by "Cowschwitz" as it's known in California--fetid is too mild a word to describe the stench, and the lots aren't even visible from I-5.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Department of Agriculture is misguided with NAIS. They are determined to find the source of disease, particularly MRSA. Well, the source is known. It is the feed lots of factory farms. 70% of all antibiotics sold in the USA goes to feed lots, where it is distributed in the feed. Anyone who has studied elementary evolution theory knows where this leads. It has been going on for more than 30 years, and it has led to widespread MRSA. Now the DofA wants to track it down with NAIS. Misguided.
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