Super Bugs in Your Food

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FDA Report Indicate Superbugs in Food

By Melanie Warner

A federal government report on antibiotic resistance reveals that superbugs in meat is a much more common and widespread problem than anyone would like to admit. New strains of hearty, antibiotic resistant salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter bacteria appear to be showing up in alarmingly high percentages of the chicken, turkey, pork and beef we buy at the supermarket.

These findings come from a little-noticed report the FDA releasedback in December. The report, which was dumped onto the FDA’s web site without so much as a mention or a press release, compiles data from 5,236 samples of chicken breasts, ground turkey, ground beef and pork chops that were taken in 2008. It’s unclear why the FDA either waited or took so long to release the info.

On her blog, Maryn McKenna, author of a book about antibiotic resistance called Superbug and the first person to write about the report, summarized some of the findings: In 2008, 45% of salmonella on chicken were resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline and 30% were immune to penicillins. Among enterococci bacteria on chicken, 65% were resistant to tetracycline and more than 90% to lincosamides, which include the everyday drug clindamycin.

Overall, salmonella, including resistant and non, was found in 12% of chicken and campylobacter in 49% of samples.

What this means for the millions of Americans who eat meat regularly is that our lunch not only has the ability to make us horribly sick, but that if we do become ill, the antibiotics that could be used to help us recover may not work.

It sounds quite scary — and it is — but the good news is that proper cooking kills most, if not all, of these dangerous bacteria. The danger comes when meat isn’t cooked thoroughly or handled properly — like if juice from raw meat comes into contact with other foods or hands that have touched uncooked meat are used to prepare other foods.

For meat industry groups, who are already feeling besieged by critics who charge that industrial livestock farming is inhumane and causes huge environmental messes, this is one more headache they don’t need. Meat producers use antibiotics on large factory farms, where thousands or tens of thousands of animals are confined in crowded quarters, to help prevent the spread of disease. They also use these drugs because, for reasons still unknown, they allow the animals to grow faster.

Such an overly judicious use of antibiotics has led to resistance because the relatively low doses administered to farm animals don’t kill all bacteria, allowing the heartiest ones to grow and mutate into superbugs. For the most part, Big Meat sees nothing wrong with its record of antibiotic use, and appears determined to defend it.

The question now is whether the FDA will do anything about the information in its report, which is based on the government’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS). Last June, FDA Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein took the bold, unprecedented step of saying the meat industry should stop using antibiotics on pigs, cattle and chicken simply for the purpose of making them grow faster. Then in December, much to the further chagrin of the meat industry, the agency released data on exactly how many antibiotics are used on farms — some 29 million pounds in 2009, or about 60% of all antibiotics in the U.S.

But less than a month later, Sharfstein, the FDA’s leader in this fight, resigned to become Maryland’s secretary of health and mental hygiene, casting doubt on whether the FDA will do anything to stop what is now clearly a runaway train.

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Posted in: FDA,first natural health news,food safety,meat,Melanie Warner,superbugs,supermarkets

Drug-resistant superbugs -

Antibiotics play havoc with gut flora

Help support our work with your order of "Simply4Health" Simply Probiotics

This is interesting in light of the known facts that GM foods do alter the lining of the intestinal system (gut mucosa).

Wednesday, 22 September 2010, Press Release: GE Free NZ

Could GE be the source of new virulent bacteria: New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1)?

Urgent research is needed to identify if a new and virulent antibiotic resistant superbug that has been affecting people in many different countries is the result of Genetic Engineering. Scientists have been warning that transgenic organisms could mutate and cause new virulent pathogens, and there are concerns that this may have now occurred.

The new super bug called NDM-1 (New Dehli metallo-beta lactamase) genes have been detected on gram-negative enteric bacilli causing severe respiratory problems, pneumonia, fever, chills, blood and urinary tract infections that are thought to be more severe than swine flu [1].

The beta-lactamase genes (bla) or Ampicillin resistance genes are commonly used in genetic engineering. They are used as marker genes to inactivate antibiotics. Scion are using it in their GE trees, and biotechnology companies use them in GE plants.

The bla gene is often carried on plasmids in the bacterial nuclei, which could then be acquired by other pathogens [2]. Recombinant technology (genetic engineering) uses the exact same process by attaching vector systems to the genes of interest and placing them into plasmids to multiply [3].

“Could the sudden appearance of the super bug be a mutation of our own making and the result of gut bacteria taking up the genetic modifications that have been introduced into food?" said Claire Bleakley president of GE-Free NZ in food and environment.

“Research is urgently needed as so little is known about the results of mixing foreign DNA and using GE to cross the species barrier. Species integrity has been developed for a reason and the spread of super bugs from eating GE foods to gut bacteria must be closely examined.”

The FSANZ has approved 37 GE foods with some containing a bla gene. FSNAZ and just ticked through a new GE corn (Smartstax) that has six different insecticidal and herbicidal genes all sourced from common soil bacteria and antibiotic genes.

Something is rotten in the GE regulatory system and human safety is being ignored for lack of evidence and lack of motivation to conduct proper science. Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) and The Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) must address the risk of the transgenic bla gene being implicated in a new pandemic and must not approve GE applications that use antibiotic resistant genes while their safety remains in doubt.

In 1993 I developed a protocol addressing flesh eating bacteria that was ignored by the WA state Dept of Health, while people were dying.  

We published out challenge to mainstream medicine in 1994 and subsequently every year since then. 

There is still no effective means to address this in the mainstream pipeline, but yet no one has come forward to engage our approach.

Drug-resistant superbugs found in 3 states

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer  Mon Sep 13, 2010

BOSTON – An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.

Scientists have long feared this — a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance, creating dangerous "superbugs."

"It's a great concern," because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. "It's just a matter of time" until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person, he said.

Grayson heads an American Society for Microbiology conference in Boston, which was buzzing with reports of the gene, called NDM-1 and named for New Delhi.

The U.S. cases occurred this year in people from California, Massachusetts and Illinois, said Brandi Limbago, a lab chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three types of bacteria were involved, and three different mechanisms let the gene become part of them.

"We want physicians to look for it," especially in patients who have traveled recently to India or Pakistan, she said.

What can people do?

Don't add to the drug resistance problem, experts say. Don't pressure your doctors for antibiotics if they say they aren't needed, use the ones you are given properly, and try to avoid infections by washing your hands.

The gene is carried by bacteria that can spread hand-to-mouth, which makes good hygiene very important.

It's also why health officials are so concerned about where the threat is coming from, said Dr. Patrice Nordmann, a microbiology professor at South-Paris Medical School. India is an overpopulated country that overuses antibiotics and has widespread diarrheal disease and many people without clean water.

"The ingredients are there" for widespread transmission, he said. "It's going to spread by plane all over the world."

The U.S. patients were not related. The California woman needed hospital care after being in a car accident in India. The Illinois man had pre-existing medical problems and a urinary catheter, and is thought to have contracted an infection with the gene while traveling in India. The case from Massachusetts involved a woman from India who had surgery and chemotherapy for cancer there and then traveled to the U.S.

Lab tests showed their germs were not killed by the types of drugs normally used to treat drug-resistant infections, including "the last-resort class of antibiotics that physicians go to," Limbago said.

She did not know how the three patients were treated, but all survived.

Doctors have tried treating some of these cases with combinations of antibiotics, hoping that will be more effective than individual ones are. Some have resorted to using polymyxins — antibiotics used in the 1950s and '60s that were unpopular because they can harm the kidneys.

The two Canadian cases were treated with a combination of antibiotics, said Dr. Johann Pitout of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. One case was in Alberta, the other in British Columbia.

Both patients had medical emergencies while traveling in India. They developed urinary infections that were discovered to have the resistance gene once they returned home to Canada, Pitout said.

The CDC advises any hospitals that find such cases to put the patient in medical isolation, check the patient's close contacts for possible infection, and look for more infections in the hospital.

Any case "should raise an alarm," Limbago said.

Conference: http://www.icaac.org

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Posted in: challenge to think outside the box,superbugs

C. difficile Once Again in the News

Certainly C. diff has been in the news for more than this article seems to infer. The issue of these infections also seem to be more problematic because mainstream medicine is still scratching its head trying to try the same old approach to a well known problem.

Once again, get your brain out of the "box" if you want to solve the existing problem and prevent it from recurring.
From 2006

Lesser-known bug a bigger hospital threat
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer, Mar 20, 2010
ATLANTA – As one superbug seems to be fading as a threat in hospitals, another is on the rise, a new study suggests.

A dangerous, drug-resistant staph infection called MRSA is often seen as the biggest germ threat to patients in hospitals and other health care facilities. But infections from Clostridium difficile — known as C-diff — are surpassing MRSA infections, the study of 28 hospitals in the Southeast found.

"I think MRSA is almost a household name. Everybody thinks of MRSA as a serious threat," said Dr. Becky Miller, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University Medical Center. She presented the research Saturday in Atlanta, at a medical conference on infection in health care facilities.

"But C. difficile deserves more attention," she added.

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, are bacteria that can't be treated with common antibiotics. They are often harmless as they ride on the skin, but become deadly once they get in the bloodstream. They enter through wounds, intravenous lines and other paths.

C-diff, also resistant to some antibiotics, is found in the colon and can cause diarrhea and a more serious intestinal condition known as colitis. It is spread by spores in feces. The spores are difficult to kill with most conventional household cleaners or alcohol-based hand sanitizers, so some of the disinfection measures against MRSA don't work on C-diff.

Deaths from C-diff traditionally have been rare, but a more dangerous form has emerged in the last ten years. Still, MRSA is generally considered a more lethal threat, causing an estimated 18,000 U.S. deaths annually.

The new study looked at infection rates from community hospitals in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in 2008 and 2009. It found the rate of hospital-acquired C-diff infections was 25 percent higher than MRSA infections.

Here are the numbers: The hospitals counted 847 infections of hospital-acquired C-diff, and 680 cases of MRSA.

Miller also reported that C-diff was increasing at the hospitals since 2007, while MRSA has been declining since 2005.

Last year, a government report noted a decline in MRSA infections in a study of 600 hospital intensive-care units. MRSA bloodstream infections connected with intravenous tubes fell almost 50 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to data reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

C-diff has seemed to be increasing in recent years, but the trend is not uniform — some hospitals report falling rates. The prevalence of different infections can vary in different parts of the country, said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, a CDC expert who was not part of the Duke study.

Conference on Healthcare-Associated Infections: http://www.decennial2010.com/

READ RELATED POSTS:
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/heads-are-still-in-sand-on-this-one.html
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2006/10/theres-not-lot-of-evidence.html
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2005/03/protecting-bottom-line-at-your-expense.html

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Posted in: C. difficile,infection control,superbugs,think outside the box