Great post elsewhere on antibiotic use in animals

There will be a bit of a blog break, as I'm traveling for a week. But here as a walk-off is an excellent post from the marvelous public-health blog Effect Measure about the complexities (to be kind) of food companies declaring antibiotic use in food animals.

Very short version of the story: Massive chicken producer Tyson advertised its chickens as being "raised without antibiotics"; the chicken eggs were actually being treated with gentamicin before hatch (therefore technically not being "raised"; the US Department of Agriculture objected, then backed down, then objected again after Tyson's competitors acted on their own.

Tyson announced it is "voluntarily" withdrawing the label. Which is more than the USDA did, apparently, its hand having been forced by Tyson's competitors organized into the Orwellian-named Truthful Labeling Coalition (including Perdue Farms Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc. and Livingston, California-based Foster Farms). Perdue and Sanderson had sued over a label they considered "clearly false and misleading," and a federal judge agreed, ordering Tyson to stop them from running any advertisements with the claim last month. Now, belatedly, the USDA is acting.

The entire post is worth reading, as is Effect Measure (which is running on a "summer schedule" and therefore posting only once a day, thus making us all look bad. Hmm, perhaps a Public Health Blog Truthful Labeling Coalition is in order...)

New blog on animal health including MRSA

Dr. J. Scott Weese of the Ontario Veterinary College (author of many important papers, discussed in many posts here, on MRSA in food and companion animals) has started a blog on animal-health issues. Here is a recent post on tracking down the source of a MRSA infection when there is a pet in the house.

The blog is called Worms and Germs and I've added it to the blogroll at right.

Much more on MRSA and animals

Again from the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology: new findings on the complex interaction of MRSA in humans, pets and food animals.

• From the University of Iowa, the first finding of MRSA in US pigs, on seven farms in Iowa and Illinois. The abstract doesn't say what subtype of MRSA was found, but a new strain of MRSA was found last year in pigs in the Netherlands and both that strain and a known human strain have been found in pigs in Canada. Carriage rates among the Midwestern pigs: from 100% of very young animals to 36% among adult swine. (Poster 983, first author AL Harper)
• From Nicholls State University and two veterinary practices in southern Louisiana, results of screening tests on pets show high rates of carriage of methicillin-resistant Staph species. The pets carried both S. aureus and S. intermedius. (Poster 1017, first author T. Rachal.) For an earlier post on pets harboring MRSA, look here.
• And from the University of Georgia, an analysis of MRSA strains isolated from 50 humans and 60 companion animals (dogs, cats, horses, birds) found the same strains in both: SCCmec type II, a hospital strain, and SCCmec type IV, the main community strain. Human carriage rates: 78% type IV, 22% type II. Animal carriage rates: overall, 40% type IV and 60% type II, but with some important differences between species — all of the cats and birds harbored type II, while the dog isolates were overwhelmingly II and the horses overwhelmingly IV. Of greatest importance, the types did not have identical resistance patterns: In humans, the type IV was sensitive to vancomycin and tetracycline, but the animal IV was sensitive to vanco only, suggesting that MRSA may be evolving differently in its transient animal hosts — an especial concern if the animal-carried strains pass back to humans. (Poster 1027, first author S. Sanchez.)